Work always comes - Designer Ketan Mistry
Ketan left his full-time role as a graphic designer with 2 or 3 freelance clients lined up. Within a couple of years he had enough work to hire a second designer, but when they lost a big client the following year, Ketan had to let his employee go.
Ketan went on to co-found his own agency in Manchester before moving to Australia with his wife and son. He worked remotely for a year before the agency folded and he found himself freelance once again.
He chats to Steve about the lessons he’s learnt along the way, including the difficulties involved in taking on employees and the benefits of being a solo freelancer.
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TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH DESIGNER KETAN MISTRY AND STEVE FOLLAND
Steve Folland: Let's get started hearing how you got started being freelance.
Ketan Mistry: I started officially started freelancing in 2007 but I actually started when I was at uni. I was doing little bits and bobs. 2007, I left Zen Internet who I was working for as a graphic designer. Before that I was building up clients. I got two or three clients to make the leap and then it went on from there.
Steve Folland: How long were you employed by somebody else, if you see what I mean?
Ketan Mistry: I was there for three years.
Steve Folland: What was it that made you want to go freelance?
Ketan Mistry: I just got bored of doing what I was doing. When I was there I was mainly doing website design. So doing the interfaces and stuff. Then I would pass that on to the developers and they'd build a website. Then it got to a point where we were just churning these designs out like we were on a conveyor belt. It was quite a big sales team so they were throwing work at us. It was getting repetitive and I got bored of it, so I thought now is the time.
Steve Folland: So you started building up freelance clients in your own time. How were you finding those clients?
Ketan Mistry: It was actually just word of mouth. Some of my colleagues when I was working there they passed on their friends to me so I did a little bit. They weren't big jobs. Just small little bit of websites. There was one client which was given me a repetitive work so that was enough to make the leap. My wife was also working full-time so that was a benefit. She said, "Just do it." So I did it!
Steve Folland: How did it go?
Ketan Mistry: It went all right. It was hard to start with. I only had probably two clients. 2007, Facebook was in its infancy and Twitter was in its infancy so you didn't have what you have now to advertise. I actually went out and did direct mailshots to restaurants and new startups trying to get some work from there. Eventually I got maybe five or six small websites to keep me going over the six months.
Ketan Mistry: Then a couple of the clients from where I was working found out I had left. Some big clients, Carcraft. We were doing work for them and they found out I left. From there they just started throwing money at me and getting me to do lots and lots of websites for them. I was doing work for them for two or three years and because of that I actually employed a graphic designer to help me. So we had a team of two doing work.
Steve Folland: Wow. When was it that you hired someone else?
Ketan Mistry: It was probably about 2009, I think.
Steve Folland: Were they freelance or did you actually employ them?
Ketan Mistry: I employed them.
Steve Folland: How did you reach that stage? What was it that triggered in you that eventually made you think 'yeah, I need to'?
Ketan Mistry: I just had so much work I couldn't do it all myself. When you work with a big client they always want a quick turnaround and I couldn't offer that. So what I did was I got another designer in. I did the big stuff, the Carcraft stuff, and all the other little bits and bobs that came in he would do. We balance it that way and it worked. It worked well. I think he was with me for about one and a half, two years.
Steve Folland: Was he working actually alongside you or remotely?
Ketan Mistry: When I first started freelancing I worked at home. I had a little office in one of the bedrooms. What happened was I started to work too late, you know what I mean? So I'd work from 7:00 and carry on working until 10:00 or 11:00, and it wasn't good for me. So I decided to get a little office. Then I moved out and then I started to do 9:00 to 6:00 or something like that and get a proper routine going. It worked well. There was just two of us in this little tiny box office.
Steve Folland: Other than having this extra pair of hands next to you were you getting the same amount of work done that you would have done 7:00 to 11:00? Did it change the way you worked?
Ketan Mistry: A little bit because when you employ somebody you have to manage them and that takes time itself. Plus when you've got your own business you've got to do admin as well. All that added up a little bit. I started working on the weekend a little bit just to catch up with the admin side of things. There's always something and the hardest part for me was when you take somebody on you've got to do all their payslips, tax and all that. That takes quite long.
Steve Folland: Did you have any support in hiring someone?
Ketan Mistry: I had my dad. He was an ex tax inspector.
Steve Folland: Oh, wow!
Ketan Mistry: Yeah! He was quite good with all the contracts and all the pay. He put me in the right direction with that. That was quite handy to have.
Steve Folland: How did things move on from there?
Ketan Mistry: After that we didn't get much stuff from Carcraft after two or three years. Then I started to panic a little bit. Because we weren't getting much work in I had to let him go eventually, which was a slight mistake actually because I panicked. I did actually get work after he left, which would have kept him on for a little while longer. It was tough but then it started to build up again. In hindsight, I wish I'd not panicked and just waited and see what happened because I did end up getting the same amount of work from another client. That's one of the things I've learned over the years is just not to panic. Work always comes. That's the way I've always done things now.
Steve Folland: It's 2010 when he leaves you?
Ketan Mistry: Yep.
Steve Folland: So we've still got quite a bit of gap between then and now.
Ketan Mistry: Around that time, 2010, me and my wife decided let's go and check out Australia. We did a little tour of Australia during that time. Came out here for four weeks I think it was just to see what Melbourne, Sydney and everything was like. It was always on in our plan to... When we came back we thought this is what we want to do. Want to go to Australia. It was always in our plan to move here.
Ketan Mistry: We carried on as normal. My wife did all the exams because she's an optician so she had to do some exams to come here. Then our plans changed when we had a little boy. So we waited and I was still freelancing. Then I co-founded an agency in Manchester with a friend. I think that was 2014 maybe.
Steve Folland: How did that come about?
Ketan Mistry: My friend was a salesman at Zen Internet where we worked together and he always wanted to start his own business. So he started his own web design agency and we shared an office in Salford. Then he came to me and said, "Why don't we just join it together? You can do the design and I'll do all the sales, proposals and marketing." I was a bit reluctant to start with because I never really wanted to start going to a partnership. My dad always said don't go into partnership because it always breaks down. But then I said, "All right. I've known him for a while so let's do it." It worked all right. It went on for four years.
Ketan Mistry: It wasn't brilliant. We weren't getting that much work in. We did employ about six staff, but they just kept leaving and they just weren't happy with the work they were doing. Then I moved here in 2016. I was still doing work for the agency whilst I was here for my first year. Then the company was just struggling. It wasn't getting any work in. There wasn't enough money to pay the staff. Then I decided to resign and go back freelancing. So I've been doing freelancing again for the last couple of years now.
Steve Folland: What did you take away from that experience?
Ketan Mistry: Not to start an agency! I just wouldn't do it. It's an experience but unless you know your partner very well and you know what they're capable of then it's all right. I think it got to a point where there just wasn't enough work coming in. It's a tricky one. You don't know unless you've done it but I wouldn't do it again. It was too stressful. There's too much involved when you take on staff. Then there's all the other tax things to sort out, pensions and all these laws that you got to go through. It's just too stressful. When you're a freelancer you lose all that responsibility and just get on with what you love doing.
Steve Folland: What was it? 2017, you're in Australia and you leave that behind. You've got one child?
Ketan Mistry: I've got one kid. Eight years old. A boy.
Steve Folland: Eight years now or eight back then?
Ketan Mistry: No, he's eight years now, here.
Steve Folland: Wow. The shift to working in Australia, was that made easier by the fact that you knew you had that work back in the UK?
Ketan Mistry: Yeah, it was. I didn't have to worry about where the pay was coming from. The only thing I had to worry about was what was going on back in the UK because I didn't really know. With the time difference and everything you hear one set of stories from one staff and another from different sets. So that was the only challenge, the communication.
Steve Folland: As you then started to think I'm going to leave that and go freelance again, how did you start to build up that next set of freelance clients now that you're in a different country?
Ketan Mistry: What happened was... I'm quite lucky really. I left and then all the other clients found out I had left so they came with me. It wasn't that difficult for me. The thing with the clients were they're all e-commerce based so it was all recurring, repetitive work. It wasn't too much of a problem. That didn't happen straight away. It took about three or four months. In that three or four months I was preparing my website out, my branding and get myself noticed.
Ketan Mistry: That's where I had a slight problem because I'd been doing development for the last four years, I didn't actually have anything to put on my portfolio, so I had to make quite a few things up to start with. I didn't have any of my work from the last six or seven years when I was freelancing by myself because everything got stolen. So I had to pluck things together and it was quite tricky. It was quite challenging to start with.
Steve Folland: In what way did everything get stolen? As in literally hard drives went?
Ketan Mistry: Everything. Because we were in Salford we had a little office and it happened on New Year's Eve, I think it was. They took all my back-up drives, my computer and everything. So everything was gone on. I didn't have anything other than what I'd printed out in my physical portfolio.
Steve Folland: Jeez!
Ketan Mistry: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Has that changed the way you now back-up?
Ketan Mistry: Yeah. Everything's online now. I have backups with Google Drive and iCloud and everything. Everything's online.
Steve Folland: That's frightening. For clients that were coming to you eventually from the agency in the UK, I'm presuming they're based in the UK, did you also start to get clients based locally in Australia?
Ketan Mistry: Yeah, so I've got a couple of clients here now. One of them an e-commerce client. I do quite a lot of work for them. But most of it's from the UK.
Steve Folland: How do you find that working across such a different time zone?
Ketan Mistry: It's fine. Actually it's quite helpful because when it's my Monday, it's still Sunday over there. So in effect I get an extra day to do work. It works quite well. I do the work during the day and by the client's morning it's ready for them so they're happy.
Steve Folland: How did you get the client in Australia? How are you putting yourself out there in Australia?
Ketan Mistry: I use my website as my main advertising tool. I used to be on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I've cancelled both of those now. It's just my website and my blog. I get quite a lot of inquiries through my website. I got so many that I had to put a message up to say I'm not taking any more work on now.
Steve Folland: Wow! Let's face it, you put that up in 2017?
Ketan Mistry: January 2018, I went freelance.
Steve Folland: What the hell did you do to your SEO to suddenly find that too much work was coming your way? I think that's the question everybody's thinking!
Ketan Mistry: I didn't do much really. When I first launched my website I created a really simple one just to get out there. Didn't get many inquiries from it. Then I re-did it to the new one, which is out there right now. I launched the previous one in January 2018 and I think around March I revamped it again. On the new one, the current one, I started to put case studies on there. So I think I've got about four case studies on there. As soon as I put that up the inquiries started flooding in. I think that did the trick for me.
Steve Folland: So are you Melbourne graphic design?
Ketan Mistry: I've put myself as a freelance designer, Melbourne and Shopify developer, Melbourne. So both of those seem to be doing quite well. I think I'm on page five or six or something, but I think one of the advantages I had was I still had my old domain name when I was freelancing seven years ago. I redirected that to my new one. So I think some of the juice from that has come across.
Steve Folland: I've got to pick you up on the fact that you said you came off Twitter and LinkedIn. What was your thinking and which did you ditch first?
Ketan Mistry: I did Twitter first. I think one of the big things for Twitter was every time I went on to see my timeline it was just full of stuff I wasn't interested in and people I didn't even follow. So I thought this is just totally unproductive for me. The other thing I noticed was if somebody commented something, did something nice, they'd get a few good comments, but then there'd be a lot of bad comments and negative comments. I thought it's not good to be part of this so I decided to quit that.
Steve Folland: So over the past 10 years or so you weren't already using it as a source of chatting to people or finding work anyway?
Ketan Mistry: I was using it.
Steve Folland: Oh, you were?
Ketan Mistry: I was using it quite a lot but then I think I just got fed up of it.
Steve Folland: Fair enough.
Ketan Mistry: When did I quit? Maybe it was past three or four months ago now I think. I don't miss it at all.
Steve Folland: Then LinkedIn?
Ketan Mistry: LinkedIn, I never liked it. My profile was as well out of date so I thought I may as well ditch that at the same time! I just don't like the interface of LinkedIn. I couldn't use it. I felt like I was using a tool from the 50s.
Steve Folland: So you're quite comfortable in the fact that people are going to find me via my online site. I don't need to put myself on these.
Ketan Mistry: Yeah.
Steve Folland: How about the others, like Instagram?
Ketan Mistry: I'm on Instagram but it's a private account just for family.
Steve Folland: Facebook? Oh my God, I just forgot Facebook exists!
Ketan Mistry: Facebook. I've got an account, I've never used it though.
Steve Folland: You mentioned your blog. Do you regularly post stuff to your website?
Ketan Mistry: I try to. It's about a date at the moment because I'm not doing anything the last month. But I try to put us at least one post up every month.
Steve Folland: Who do those posts target? Who are they aimed at? Your clients or...
Ketan Mistry: It depends on what mood I'm in. Sometimes it's an information piece. Maybe like Shopify or something like that and sometimes it might just be an image of some wireframes I'm doing. It depends what I'm working on or what pops into my head at the time. I don't target it at anything in particular. I just do what I am doing basically.
Steve Folland: Nice.
Ketan Mistry: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Do you put personal stuff on there as well? As in giving a bit away as to who Ketan might be?
Ketan Mistry: No, I don't. But I do have the about me page, which has quite a lot of stuff on it about me. It has a timeline on there which is of everything that's happened to me over the last 20 years.
Steve Folland: It's cool. As ever of course you can go to beingfreelance.com and there'll be a link through to Ketan's website. I really like the timeline. Although it does make me laugh because there are testimonials from LinkedIn on your website!
Ketan Mistry: Yeah.
Steve Folland: So it did serve a purpose!
Ketan Mistry: Yeah, but they're quite old testimonials. I think they're probably about 10 years old!
Steve Folland: How is your work-life balance now? Obviously long time ago you were working 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM and it sounds like you've always taken a view to try and adjust and tweak things. How's it for you now?
Ketan Mistry: Now it's brilliant. My days usually revolve around my son. I do the school pick up and drop off. I usually start around about 7:00 in the morning. Just catch up with a few emails. 7:00 to 8:00. Then drop my son off at school. I usually start back again around about 9:30 or something like that. Then I work solid from 9:30 to 2:30. Then I go and pick my son up again. Then I do a little bit from between 4:30 and 6:30. I try not to work past 8:00. That's my cut off point. If the sun's shining then I sit outside for a bit and get some vitamin D. It's nice now.
Steve Folland: So now working from home you've managed to be more restrained than the first time around.
Ketan Mistry: Yeah, a lot more now. I'm quite lucky because I think all my clients that I have I don't really have deadlines from them. They just let me get on with it and get things done. They know I'm pretty fast anyway so they don't enforce any deadlines on me, which is really nice to have. I can just get on with things and juggle things around whenever I like. So it's good.
Steve Folland: Do you think you would ever hire people or go down that route again?
Ketan Mistry: No. I don't think so. I think one of the things that put me off the first time round was all the admin work that it involves and the micro-managing of everything. I'm quite particular with my work, so I like to make sure everything's how I like to have it and how it should work. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so if the work's not done to a certain standard then I get a bit edgy and I like to redo it. So I'd rather not have that situation.
Steve Folland: The first time when you hired it was because you had simply too much work to do. So does that mean you now turn work down?
Ketan Mistry: I do. I turn a lot of work down. I have to because I don't want to be in a situation where I've got 10 projects, I'm working every day and on the weekends and not having time to spend with my little boy. So I try to keep a good balance.
Steve Folland: What is in your head when you're choosing what to work on?
Ketan Mistry: I like to make sure it's a good mix of design and bit of development if I can. I try not to pick something that I've done before. It's got to have some sort of challenge to it. I'm a bit picky like that.
Steve Folland: Have things changed over the years which have given you that ability? Is pricing tied up in that?
Ketan Mistry: When an inquiry comes in I don't really look at how much it's going to cost, what I'm going to make out of it. I prefer to know what type of work it's going to be. I'm pretty flexible with pricing. If it is a big project then you call it adequately. But I'm more interested in what I'll be building and what I'll be designing rather than what I'll be making out of it.
Steve Folland: Nice.
Ketan Mistry: Yeah.
Steve Folland: If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance what would that be?
Ketan Mistry: I think it would be not to panic when things get quiet because work, it'll always come. That's one thing I've noticed. It's like a cycle. It'll go quiet but then it will always pick up and it'll be back to normal again, so not to worry.
Steve Folland: Ketan, thanks so much. All the best being freelance!
Ketan Mistry: No worries. Thank you for having me.