We are the product - Musician Rachel Mason
Over the last 15 years, Rachel’s gone from unhappy administrator… to IPSE’s Freelancer of the Year.
Rachel teaches 1 on 1, she mentors choirs, she’s performed around the world and appeared as a judge on a SKY 1 TV show, and she runs workshops in schools and communities. And that’s not even everything.
By taking her talent and finding plenty of different ways to apply it, Rachel’s been able to build a successful portfolio career with multiple income streams.
“Clients are buying into you when they hire you, “ says Rachel. “As freelancers, we are the product.”
TRANSCRIPT OF THE BEING FREELANCE PODCAST WITH MUSICIAN RACHEL MASON AND STEVE FOLLAND
Steve Folland: Okay. As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Rachel Mason: Okay. 15 years ago now, I was working in a job that I really hated in admin, which made me really miserable. I'd always been a singer and had a degree in music, but I really wanted to teach singing and run choirs and things. So I thought, okay, right, I'm just going to start doing it as a kind of side hustle, just kind of a little bit in the evening and gradually that built up and built up and built up so much so that I actually couldn't also do my day job, which was just incredible. So I was able to give up the day job, and that's the dream of all freelancers, and went into teaching from home privately, and then teaching lessons in schools.
Steve Folland: Would you teach online or was it all in person, then?
Rachel Mason: All in person. So I'd have people at my house in my little studio and then I would go into schools during school time and teach privately in one of their little practice rooms at their school.
Steve Folland: And how did you go about getting that work, finding those clients?
Rachel Mason: Tenacity, basically. I think if you want something enough and you dislike your life enough, you'll push and push and push and push until you get there. And that's definitely what I did. I just used to come home because I worked fairly near home so I would come home every lunchtime and I would spend the whole of my lunchtime on the computer emailing every school in the area and loads of different private schools and things, trying to get them sort of interested in having me come and teach for them. And a couple of them said, "Yes," which began with me being able to kind of build up my client base.
Rachel Mason: So it's mainly that, doing lots of little bits of online advertising and putting a poster up in the local shop and that kind of thing. It just sort of snowballed, which I feel so that that happened because it could easily have not. And then I would had to stay at my job, and I'd probably still be there now.
Steve Folland: Yeah, so you were teaching people. And then were you performing, as well?
Rachel Mason: Yeah. I was doing much more performing then. I started running the show choir with a couple of friends at that time, just when Glee was massive. So show choirs were the new thing, which felt very fortuitous timing. So we got an enormous amount of stuff from that. I was the musical director but I also performed in the group, which was amazing. So we performed as part of the Britain's Got Talent Spellbound Tour and then we went to New York and performed there in Hollywood and Dublin and the Royal Albert Hall and lots of crazy stuff.
Steve Folland: Whoa, wait. Because you entered Britain's Got Talent with that.
Rachel Mason: No. Bizarrely, we'd only been together about three months as a choir and we were quite small then and we performed in the foyer space at the Colston Hall in Bristol. So it wasn't even the main stage and there's lots of balconies. So people often kind of look down at you, can view you performing from above. And we didn't realize that one of the people watching us was actually the booker for the Britain's Got Talent Tour, and Spellbound, the acrobats, had just won Britain's Got Talent that year, so they were doing a tour, but they couldn't do a full show. So this lady was looking for other acts that would kind of complement it. The same kind of things that the audience members who liked Spellbound would enjoy, and she was thinking, "Oh, a glee choir would be brilliant. Where am I going to find one?" And then we were right there performing and she just booked us and we were like, "Oh, okay."
Steve Folland: It just goes to show you never know who's watching wherever you might be putting yourself.
Rachel Mason: Exactly. That one of the bits of advice I always give my students, just always do your absolute best because even a performance that doesn't feel like it's a big deal, you just never know where that might take you. And then from that performance, that was filmed by one of the dads of the girls in our choir, and then the American Show Choir Championships saw it and booked us to perform in New York as the first international guest choir to go out and perform, which was pretty cool.
Steve Folland: My jaw has actually dropped. That's so lovely, though. There's an element of luck isn't there? But equally it's putting yourself out there as well as being good. So where did it go from there? How did you capitalize on that?
Rachel Mason: Oh, my gosh, I could say many things. It was a bit mad. Glee was very, very popular in those first couple of years of it being on television. So we did a lot of stuff, loads of local performances and bigger things. And people refer to me as a fairy godmother because if they asked me for something I will make it happen, generally. So one of the choir members was like, "Oh, I know, I'd love to play up at the Albert Hall." I went, "All right." And I worked out a way to make that happen. So we performed as part of the Barnardo's performance there, which was wonderful because we were able to raise lots of money for the charity as well. And yeah, it was an absolutely amazing moment just looking around the Royal Albert Hall knowing that we were singing there.
Steve Folland: So if somebody says to you or you say to yourself, "I want this to happen," and then you say, "You can always figure out a way." If I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, okay, well how can I do that myself? If I want to get somewhere, how are you engineering it?
Rachel Mason: A lot of it is endless Internet searches. Thank God we have the Internet. It'd be impossible without it, but you can search for the right kind of thing or the right person to speak to and then just contact people. And the worst they can say is, "No," or just ignore you, and that's not going to harm you forever if someone says, "No." That's what I find. And if you're sort of nice and charming then people are usually fairly nice to you. And that's generally how things have happened for me. I just sort of push at things until I can kind of find a way in and then just endear myself to people as much as possible.
Steve Folland: And did you have a website and stuff that could see what you as an individual as well as you as a choir were doing?
Rachel Mason: I didn't actually have one then. I do now. A few years ago I had some extra money and thought, "Right, I'm going to have a proper website done." But no, I didn't really have my own one then. I was recording things under a pseudonym, so I had a website for that. But you wouldn't know that was me, necessarily. So, yeah, it took me actually quite a long time to have a website for my business. Because I guess I didn't really think I was a business, which sounds really silly, but I didn't even really consider myself a freelancer or anything. I just thought, "Oh, this is just my life. It's just stuff that I do," and I didn't think I was, I don't know, worthy of a website I guess or that anyone would be interested in actually looking at it. Yeah. It took me a while to kind of feel like there was something actually worth showing people.
Steve Folland: So back into your story, then. So you're in New York, you're playing the Albert Hall.
Rachel Mason: Yeah, what happened next. Well, we then got asked to perform in Hollywood and what was lovely is a lot of the very, very famous show choirs are based in LA. So we went out to LA and we worked with a lot of those choirs, so the choir that Glee is based on and their choir room is an exact replica of this choir's choir room so it's very weird stepping in there. It's like going on a TV set. And they've been on the Oprah Winfrey Show and they're just amazing.
Rachel Mason: Meeting them and working with them was incredible. I've worked with quite a lot of show choir directors all over the world even though it's predominantly an American thing. And Canada also have quite a lot of them. Britain are very much behind in that we're not show choir specialist. So I found it amazing that they wanted my input and wanted me to do arrangements for them and I'd think, "Yeah, but I'm British. I don't know anything. You are the people who do show choir."
Rachel Mason: So from all of that I got to go all over the place and judge show choir competitions. So I met loads of people. I met Lots of other show choir specialists all over the world and they're just the loveliest people and they're all freelance in what they do so we've all stayed in touch. So we do bits of songwriting together and do stuff for different charities and if they happen to be over here or I happen to be over there, we try and catch up if we can. Yeah. I feel so blessed that I've made all these friendships. They're just incredible people.
Steve Folland: Yeah. I guess in many ways the fact, though, that you were British made you even stand out, made you more recognizable.
Rachel Mason: Yeah, I guess so. They all found my accent hilarious. "Oh, my God. You're so British." "Thank you. Yes." And they really liked the way we seem to do things because we don't have the rules and regulations because their competitions are quite heavily regulated, whereas we were just going out there as the guest stars so we could just do whatever we liked and we didn't have to do 38 seconds of acapella singing in the middle of a song and then this and that and things, so we have much more freedom.
Rachel Mason: And I think they liked some of the arrangements I did and the kind of unusual things. I like mashing up a song with a very different style. It's like we did a jazz version of Chelsea Dagger, which they all loved because they just don't do anything like that. So they were like, "Oh, my gosh, that's so cool." So I've been asked to do lots of things like that and help mentor choirs all over the world, which I love doing. It's so nice to be able to help encourage teenagers and young adults to fulfill their potential and be confident and achieve as much as they want to.
Steve Folland: And so while all this is happening, and you still hadn't even realized perhaps that what you were doing was being self-employed or being a business.
Rachel Mason: Yeah.
Steve Folland: You must have still been managing it. Like you still had to quote people, you still have to get paid, you still have to keep your expenses. How did you stay on top of all of that?
Rachel Mason: Well, at the time I'd just gone through a divorce, actually. I think that kind of spurred me on to think, "I can do this on my own." My parents live nearby and they're very, very supportive. And my dad always helped me with my accounts because I'm a little bit useless at math so I've got a lovely strong family unit. But then I was basically a single for seven years, so I could just absolutely throw myself into my business, travel as much as I wanted and work stupid hours. Sometimes I'll be arranging at 2:00 in the morning and doing weird things like that. So my business became my boyfriend, essentially. So I been able to do lots and lots of stuff.
Rachel Mason: And then I met my now husband and everything got rebalanced a little bit because I actually wanted to spend time with another human. And now we've got two children so I have to think very carefully about what I take on and what I say no to because I don't want to leave them for long, for like a week because they're very little, still.
Steve Folland: How old are they?
Rachel Mason: Our little girl is almost two and a half and our little boy is 11 months. He's one in a couple of weeks.
Steve Folland: Wow.
Rachel Mason: They're little people.
Steve Folland: And how did that, then, change? You kind of hinted at it, but that change in your personal life, how did you balance that out with this work life that you've been able to throw yourself into so well?
Rachel Mason: Initially, not that easily. I found it quite hard because I was used to being quite nocturnal. I just do things at funny times and my husband had a normal nine-to-five job, so we'd literally never see each other if I kept up that lifestyle. So it took me a while to kind of adjust to it and stop working sometimes. I used to just keep working and working. Even while I was watching TV, I'd still be sending emails or doing something and my husband was like, "Yeah, sometimes just relax. You don't have to work all time." So he really taught me how to relax, which I wasn't very good at. Now I'm much better at it and I have to try and separate things.
Rachel Mason: So I would reply to an email, if a student messaged me late at night and said, "Oh, can you bring such and such in tomorrow for me to sing?" I'd reply then. Whereas now I think, "No, that's not really business hours. So I'll do that tomorrow." I'm a little bit more sensible and protective of my kind of personal, my family time. Otherwise, being freelance, it's just because you work from home generally and it just spills over into your personal life very, very easily. And then you find there's no separation. So, yeah, it took me a while to get used to that. But particularly when the children came along, I wanted to actually spend time with them and watch them grow up rather than always having my head in my laptop doing things and missing out, so that's changed things a lot.
Steve Folland: Yeah. So back into your story again, because I feel like we're not done, that touring, but also judging. So you started judging on other singing competitions across the States, right?
Rachel Mason: Yeah, yeah. States and Canada and Ireland and I was doing quite a bit of acapella judging then as well. There's a competition in the UK called The Voice Festival, which is fantastic. It's mostly collegiate acapella groups and a lot of universities now have at least one acapella group as part of the university. So, then, Bristol University has about five. It's an insane amount of acapella groups and they're amazing. So I went and judged their competitions and did some workshops for them and then from that, I'd just given... Layla, our daughter, she was eight weeks old and I had an email from Sky Television asking me to come and be a judge on a new show, a new acapella show they were doing for Sky One and I couldn't really believe it. I was standing there in my maternity wear covered in baby vomit, just thinking, "Yeah, I don't think I'm really the kind of person you want. I'm not TV-ready. This is not what you want for your show. I'm not the person."
Rachel Mason: And so I spoke to them and I said, "Look, I've just had a baby. I don't think I'm really what you want." And they're like, "No, no, we really, really do want you. How are we going to make this happen?" And I went, "I don't know." I spoke to my husband and he said, "Well, we could do it if we all went." So if I took my husband and baby, because I couldn't go away for a week away from my tiny newborn, but if we all went, I would see her enough to balance that out. So they were like, "Yeah." They said, "Yes," so we were like, "Okay." So they put us up in this massive suite in a fancy London hotel. My husband and baby would go off during the day, and the little baby would be off on the tube, going to have adventures across London.
Rachel Mason: And I would be taken to the studio in my maternity joggers and then they'd get me dressed and makeup and hair and stuff. And I'd like a normal human ready to judge people, which was the most bizarre week of my life, lapsing from this kind of mom to a television personality. It was very strange, but absolutely incredible and the rest of the panel were all acapella specialists and just the loveliest people and we've all stayed friends. We quite often end up judging together or working together for different things and it's just been so nice to have them as part of my life. They're so intelligent and so kind.
Rachel Mason: Yeah, that was a pretty kind of life changing experience because so many things have come from that because once you've got the kind of rubber stamp of "You are worthy to be on television," kind of thing, people just go, "Oh, yes, of course we'll have you as part of this because you did that." So I've been able to do so many other things because of that show, which was incredible.
Steve Folland: What kind of things have you done? Has your business then changed? Are you still running a show choir in the meantime?
Rachel Mason: Well, we ended Euphoria when we just came back from Hollywood in 2015 so there were some sort of differences in the leadership. That's probably the best way of saying it. And then my friend and I, one of the other ladies from Euphoria, she and I set up a new show choir called Amplify, which she and I run. And we performed in the 25th anniversary celebrations at Disneyland Paris and done some stuff on Gareth Malone's tour and bits like that. That's been really fun. The original show choir doesn't exist, but a new one does so that's been really nice to have a new and slightly different things to work on. So we set that up in 2015 and it's still running now.
Steve Folland: Brilliant.
Rachel Mason: And the things that have happened since I did sing some acapella, gosh, people approach me all the time for products, advertising and it could have weird things like that. And then I was invited to join the judging team for the WellChild School Choir of the Year Awards, which I absolutely loved doing. And there were lovely school choirs that sing songs together and then we sort of judge, which one's best and then they get to perform at the WellChild Award ceremony in front of Prince Harry because he's their patron. So I kind of worked with the choirs and help with their performance. And then, yeah, last year when I was massively pregnant, I was weeks from giving birth, I met Prince Harry and Meghan and that was amazing. I didn't think that was going to happen in my life.
Steve Folland: You said at one point where you felt like, "Oh, do I belong here?" In fact, there's been a few instances where it's kind of been a bit like that, but you obviously stepped past it, right?
Rachel Mason: Yeah. I think it's the imposter syndrome, isn't it? And I think most freelancers probably have that. Lots that I've spoken to always think, "Oh, well, I'm just normal. I'm just nothing, really." And so you don't see what other people see from the outside. So yeah, you have to sort of feel the fear and do it anyway thing. So even when it's something I hadn't really done before, I just think "Well, what's the worst that can happen?" And I usually find if you just go for it, it turns out okay, generally. I think I've worked out what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. And I think that's a huge thing. That was a huge turning point because I hate doing my accounts and stuff.
Rachel Mason: I just found a lovely accountant and I was like, "Oh, that's amazing. I don't have to think about that at all now. She can just do it all for me." Like trying to build websites on my own. I'm useless at that, as well. So I've got people do that for me. It's just working out your strengths and weaknesses because there's no one who's good at everything. And I'm certainly not good at everything. Ask anyone who tastes my cooking and they'll go, "Yeah, that's someone who's not good at everything."
Steve Folland: And are you somebody who sets goals, sets plans?
Rachel Mason: Yeah, I'm ridiculously goal oriented to a kind of stupid degree sometimes. So on my phone I have a to-do list, which is sort of my day-to-day stuff I need to get through. And then I have these kind of big career goals list and then a kind of bucket list for family stuff and things. There's nothing I love more than ticking stuff off a list. It just makes me so happy. And so, yeah, I love having goals and really big dreams and just think, "Okay, well, how would I do that if there were no limitations, if there was no financial, no time limitations, how, how would I go about this? Is it possible?" And that's quite often how bizarre things have happened in my life.
Rachel Mason: Like I right now run an artist management business because I just thought, "Yeah, I could do that," so I did that. And then I set up Lyrical Light, which is my... I had really, really bad postnatal depression after both of my children, and I found doing creative things like songwriting really helped me through that. And I didn't publicly admit it. Only a tiny number of people knew how much I had struggled. And then I thought, actually this isn't good to keep this in because people think I'm some kind of goddess who just sails through filming a TV show with a little baby. And I was like, "It really wasn't like that. I was crying in the toilets 80% of the day." And I thought, yeah, I'm being unfair to other people if I come across like I'm perfect because I'm just far from it.
Rachel Mason: So I sort of admitted it on Facebook and various social media and the amount of people who came out of the woodwork and were like, "Oh, my gosh, I also had postnatal depression." And people from all over the world contacted me. It was amazing. So from that I set up these workshops called Lyrical Light, where I go and work with women and men who've had postnatal depression and together we write a song, kind of representing their journey through it. So they've got this lovely creative thing to show for a really hard time in their lives.
Steve Folland: Wow. What a lovely thing to do. So are we now up to date in your story?
Rachel Mason: I think so.
Steve Folland: I feel like we are.
Rachel Mason: What else has happened? Yeah. I think that's it.
Steve Folland: And now, sure, you're a freelancer, you're self-employed, but it's almost like you've got lots of little business-y things on the go. It's like you've got a very diverse income stream, I guess, going on.
Rachel Mason: Yeah, my main income comes from running choirs and teaching, singing privately and that kind of balances out some of the other things, which might not make as much money but are things I really feel if that I want to do for the community and for people who are struggling with mental health issues. So they kind of balance out quite nicely. I like having lots of different things. I always found this at school, you know when you're doing GCSEs and you've got about a billion subjects to do, I would swap between them. So I'd do a bit of English homework and then a bit of music and then a bit of something else. And they always say that "A change is as good as a rest" expression, which I do find works for me. So I still do that now. So I'll do a bit of invoicing for something and then I'll do a bit of song writing and then I'll go and teach for a bit and then I'll do something else.
Rachel Mason: I find that sort of keeps it all quite fresh, and I don't get bored and stuck with doing the same thing. Because you kind of run out of challenges after a while and I absolutely adore my students but the same pattern tends to happen. You start teaching them when they're quite young and then they go right through school with you teaching them and they go right through all their grades and do brilliantly and that's lovely.
Rachel Mason: And then they go off to university and then the same pattern happens again with all different students. So you essentially are doing the same thing over and over again. And you can teach different songs but I've already proved to myself over 15 years that I can do this. And I like having a challenge. I like being a little bit afraid sometimes of the, "Oh, can I do this?" So, yeah, I love having quite a diverse, bizarre career.
Steve Folland: And it's funny because you said that you didn't feel like a freelancer, that you didn't feel that business self-employee for so long. And yet, first I came across you is when your face is on the front of a magazine because you've won Freelancer of the Year here in the UK last... No, this year-
Rachel Mason: This year, yeah. I am the current, the reigning queen of freelancing or something like that. But, yeah, that was like the best moment of my life I think, winning that. That just completely floored me. I really didn't think I would win. I only applied for it because I was up in the middle of the night feeding my baby, and I was just going through my phone because it was 3:00 in the morning, and I just saw this advert to apply for that and I thought, "Oh yeah, I guess I am actually freelance, aren't I? Because I'm not employed by anyone." That's the first time I'd ever really used that term for myself, which is really strange.
Rachel Mason: So I applied for it and thought, "Oh, I will never get picked. They'll have loads of clever people." And then I had this email from, from IPSE a few weeks later saying, "You're in the final six." And I think I replied, "You did mean me, Rachel Mason, you didn't mean somebody else?" I just thought, "There's no way, no way." And then I had to go to London to meet all the other freelancers for all the different awards who were all just the loveliest, they're just like my tribe. You all get each other. I learned to do a little presentation about my job and what I do, in five minutes, which was the interesting because I was like, "God, I do like so many things. How am I going to get that into a five-minute presentation?" And that seemed to go okay.
Rachel Mason: And then the award's ceremony, they do a big thing and announce the winner and as they we're talking about the winner before they announced my name and they were sort of describing the winner in fairly loose terms to begin with and they got more specific. My husband, he wasn't sitting with me, I was sitting with other finalists, and a couple of things in, and he said to the person next to him, "It's Rachel. It's Rachel."
Rachel Mason: And I was still thinking, "Oh, it's not me. It's not me. It's not going to be me. Come on." And then I won. And my face is just hilarious. The photograph of me just looking completely dumbfounded as I went and received my award. I just couldn't believe it. But that's been an absolutely enormous benefit to my life in so many ways.
Steve Folland: Really? In what ways?
Rachel Mason: You get the prize money so that you get £5,000 to spend on your business. That's been massively helpful because I was just launching Lyrical Light and my music management business, then, which is called Listen In Colour. So I needed quite a bit of money behind both of them to get the websites up and running and things. I could buy some more recording equipment and a new laptop and lots of bits that I needed but couldn't normally afford. So that made a massive difference.
Rachel Mason: And then I get coaching from Aon, which this enormous, amazing company you help you with management and marketing and financial things. It's just incredible. And just meeting all the other freelancers. They're just absolute incredible inspirational people and quite a few of us have started working together on little projects for different things because we just got on so well and thought, "Oh, yeah we could do this together and we could do this."
Steve Folland: Yeah, that's nice. So even though they weren't musicians like you, you all had a lot in common anyway.
Rachel Mason: Absolutely. Yeah. Some of them are really creative but in completely different ways. But they just get the whole freelance lifestyle, and they're really inspired people. They're so good at what they do. And then they're just generous and kind and it's just a real pleasure to do anything with them. Any contact with them is always so lovely because you just sort of pick each other up a bit. Because you don't really have that when you're freelance, to have a boss to say, "Well done, you're hitting your targets. Here's a bonus." You just sort of bumble along thinking, "Okay, no one's complaining about what I'm doing. So I'm assuming I'm okay." So when people truly understand what you do and say you're doing a really good job, that means so much because it can be quite a lonely life as a freelancer, can't it?
Steve Folland: Yeah. And obviously you've been doing well enough anyway for 15 years or so, but I'm wondering, what with that Aon, with that coaching and stuff, what difference has that made? What have you picked up from that?
Rachel Mason: Well, I've still got most of my sessions to go actually because they've booked it all in for me. I'm not great at marketing and things. I don't really know much about that because I've never had to really do any marketing because I live in a village so everybody knows everybody and all the villages around. So that word-of-mouth has generally built up my singing, teaching practice and things. And I've got enough of a name as a workshop leader and that kind of thing to get the big national and international workshops to lead. But yeah, this would take me to a whole other level that I've just never investigated. So that's really exciting.
Steve Folland: Yeah. It's funny though, isn't it? When you think about marketing, we kind of think about advertising, but really you're marketing just by doing what you do and being yourself and all of those people knowing you and experiencing what it's like to be around you presumably anyway.
Rachel Mason: Yeah. And I think that I forget that we, as freelancers, we are the product as well. They're buying into you when they hire you. Not just the thing that you can do, but they are booking you as opposed to somebody else. So there's obviously something about your personality they like, or the way you do things, which it can be quite hard to accept because you just feel normal yourself, but other people see you as a kind of commodity that they want to have a part of, which is amazing really.
Steve Folland: Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Rachel Mason: I think not to be afraid. I think we spend a lot of time, particularly when we're younger, thinking, "Oh, well who am I to do these things? There's always so many people better than me. What's the point? I'm going to fail." I spent a lot of time doubting myself. And to have more courage and not be afraid as much. I think that's probably the thing that held me back at the beginning.
Steve Folland: Nice. Well, it's amazing to hear how you've gone from hating your admin job to creating your own dream jobs.