Getting Started as a Freelancer with Lauren Aquilino and Sydney Mulligan

Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by the MoPros. I'm your host, michael Hartman, joined today by co-host Naomi Liu, the big white. Hello, that was kind of awkward.

Speaker 2: 0:37

That was very awkward, Michael.

Speaker 1: 0:39

You know I'm trying to make it. I wasn't sure if you were going to say anything.

Speaker 2: 0:42

You're just like awkward vibes. Okay, I guess I should say You're just going gonna leave me hanging there, that's okay, that's fine, I'm used to it.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Well, let's get into it. So today, uh, you know, with the current economic environment, there are more people who are considering or have already started doing freelance or solopreneur businesses to either fill in the gap or to to just really be a new initiative for them. We thought it would be good to have some real talk about what it takes to get started in freelancing and marketing ops. I think think of this as we. You know, I just had a conversation with Jessica cow a few weeks ago. That is sort of the other side of that If you're hiring freelancers or consultants or agencies. So I think consider this the other side of that coin.

Speaker 1: 1:23

So joining us to discuss this are Lauren Aquilino and Sydney Mulligan, the co-founders of ME Collective. Lauren is currently the CEO of ME Collective. She has over 10 years of B2B marketing, customer relationship management and email marketing, both in-house and as a consultant. Sydney is currently the COO of ME Collective. She also has many years of marketing and marketing operations experience, both in-house and as a consultant. Both of these women have been Marketo champs and Sydney was in the inaugural fearless 50 class with Marketo. Lauren and Sydney. Thanks for joining us today, thanks for having us.

Speaker 1: 1:58

All right, I like how you said we're currently in these roles.

Speaker 3: 2:01

Like we might fire each other, we might fire each other Any moment.

Speaker 4: 2:06

I also am wondering like how long do I get to say like over 10 years, Like I'm really excited to get to 10 years of marketing experience, and then like do I ever have to update that with how long it's been? Or we just always say over 10 years.

Speaker 3: 2:19

I don't know. It's always over 10.

Speaker 4: 2:24

Right, I mean, I'm not over 20, but it's never going to be over 20.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Right, I'm way over 10. I'm probably over 20. So I don't know. I try not to talk about it.

Speaker 4: 2:34

You get to a point where you don't want to talk about it anymore.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Like our collective experience, like we have 100 years of experience on this call right now, yeah, near 100 years of experience on this call alone.

Speaker 1: 2:46

There you go, that's good, all right. Well, so let's let's kind of jump into it and just start with the basics. Uh, you know, I think there's there's important steps that someone should take if they want to get to start as a freelancer. So, lauren, maybe you can kick us off here and talk about, like, what are some of the basics someone should be thinking about if they're looking at starting out as a freelancer.

Speaker 4: 3:12

Basics are not basic at all, honestly. It seems like, really, you kind of mentioned this, michael, but it seems like everybody's doing it right now, like everybody's kind of like oh, I'm on my own or I'm starting off on my own, Obviously like the the economy is kind of tumultuous right now, like everybody's kind of like oh, I'm on my own or I'm starting off on my own.

Speaker 4: 3:30

Obviously, like the the economy is kind of tumultuous right now. Um, it is not that I don't think anybody can do it, cause I certainly think anyone can do what they put their minds to but I do think that setting the expectations of what it takes to be a freelancer is important. Um, because you really are starting your own business, like it's not just I'm going to be a consultant or I'm going to work, you know, on contract from time to time, but you've got to make sure that you're running your sales calls or your you know, meetings with your accountant, your taxes, whether you need to file for an LLC and obviously, like all of the rules are different in Canada and America and Portugal or wherever it is that you live. So there's a lot to take into consideration as far as running a business. But I think, like before you can even jump into that, is thinking about, you know, do I?

Speaker 4: 4:29

What do I really want out of my life right now, and is that something that I can do and that I, that I that aligns with my values and the reason I say that is because I don't you know know how much we'll get into this today, but there is a big difference between freelance consulting or contracting or working in-house or at an in-house agency, and so I definitely would say that if you, listener, are looking into freelancing, I would, if you want to do it safely, try to moonlight outside of the position that you are kind of in right now to see if you even like it before, like quitting your job and moving to Costa Rica. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:18

I would also say like moonlighting is a good way. I think before you start freelancing, it's really smart to build yourself a little pile of fuck you money like a little nest egg, and moonlighting is a good way to do that If you can swing it and your employer allows it or you you know whatever. But you never want to be in a situation where you're stuck with a shitty client and you have to keep working with them because you have to financially. You need a little pile of money that you can tell a client to just go away, that nothing is worth your piece, that if they aren't paying you or things aren't going well, you can still take care of yourself.

Speaker 1: 5:57

I think it's interesting that you bring up that like what is it you want from a lifestyle, because I think a lot of people have a perception about how freelancing means all this, you know, more control over what you do and you don't do, which is there's elements of that, I suspect, but there are also economic factors that go into it as well. So what I mean, what do you think of, what are some of the economics of being a freelancer that someone who wants to do this needs to understand? I know, lauren, you maybe brought up a point like beyond your sales calls Right, and that's one thing that I learned when I started looking at doing this is that, like, the amount of time that you have to allocate to not just doing the work is pretty substantial.

Speaker 4: 6:41

I mean, the first thing that I ended up outsourcing as a freelancer was finance, because I was spending hours a week chasing down late invoices, like literal hours, and so, even before, like Sydney, and I decided we can talk more about it later but decided to kind of like pair up, finance was the first thing that I was like, oh my gosh, I need help. Number one, because it's not my forte, like I don't do that, that's, I'm not a finance consultant, I'm not a bookkeeper, um. But number two, like the amount of time it was taking was bananas, um. And then, like you said, like sales calls or like finance structure, uh, what we're seeing so much is that freelancers are really not, um, charging enough based on the amount of time it takes to run your business. It's not just the amount of hours you're spending with your clients, it's the whole thing that you need to get paid for.

Speaker 3: 7:41

Yeah, and I will say that I've noticed a few people that I've talked to lately I would say in the last six to 12 months that are starting out as freelancers. Almost all of them have accidentally taken on a really not ideal client situation as one of their first clients because they didn't know any better and they didn't know how to advocate for themselves. But a bad client becomes a very expensive client for you. And when I say a bad client, I mean it's not just like how the client treats you and your working relationship. It can also be how steady is the work that they give you. If you're in a relationship with a client where you are billing them at the end of the month for however many hours they used and you're kind of on the hook for an unlimited amount of time it might be zero, it might be 100. That's really really hard for you to plan how and when you can take other freelance clients around that.

Speaker 2: 8:33

Yeah, I'm curious how much time you allocate towards like actually doing the work and client relationship development and like making sure there's like the postmortems and things like that and just thinking about all of that, as opposed to just kind of okay, let me do the work, hand it off here it's done. Like what does that kind of split look like to you?

Speaker 3: 8:53

Um, it's a very interesting question because I think before we started recording, you mentioned that you've never consulted before, like never been an agency, you've never been a freelancer um, which is great. Yeah, this is a really good thing to talk about, because I would say, like billable time with a client is probably 50% actually hands on keys, doing work, and it's at least 50% what we like to call marketing ops therapy, like we're like post care, during care, pre care, all of the care. Yes, yes, it is much more like stakeholder management and like emotional care of your stakeholders and change management and all of those types of more relationship oriented things that we would consider like consulting soft skills than the hard skills. A lot of people think that they are ready to step out and be a freelancer because they're really technically very good at their job and that is wonderful, but that is not the majority of this job. The soft skills are much harder to learn. You can teach almost anyone the technical skills, but the soft skills are a real challenge.

Speaker 4: 9:57

Yeah, and I think they will be too. It depends like how many clients somebody decides to take on, because Helene Abeg, one of the freelancers that works with us, and a couple of clients, she had mentioned this thing perfectly when someone had asked a question similar to what Sydney was saying, which is like help, I have a client that wants, basically me to be on call, and Helene said you have to think that every client you have, whether it's one hour a week or 25 hours a week, has a minimum emotional investment in it. You're going to have a point person. You're going to have an email that needs to go out every week summarizing your work for the week. Just because someone is a small client versus a larger client does not necessarily mean they're going to take less time to manage the non-billable side of things. Yeah, I think it's in the same vein of, like the.

Speaker 3: 10:54

You know you always hear it's cheaper to retain a customer than to get a new one. It is much less resource intensive for you as a consultant to have fewer larger clients than it is to have a lot of really small clients. 25 billable hours a week is very different. With one client you're billing 25 hours for, versus five clients you're billing five hours a week for. That's way, way, way more work. So even person to person, your bandwidth will change. How many hours you will bill will change. It's not just this many hours a week, it's how many clients can you take on.

Speaker 1: 12:39

So interesting Cause when. I I know when I talked to somebody um not too long ago, I I heard something like 50% of the time would be doing work with the clients and 50% would be selling right, you know, looking for the next bit of work. But that didn't even count in the administrative stuff.

Speaker 4: 12:57

So I guess it's like 150% of your time goes into this you do have to manage how much time you can actually bill, and I do think that's why it's important that people don't like under charge Because, like I said, if you're doing per billable hour, then it needs to cover for everything. But if you think, even like in a traditional agency I think of this example, I don't think that I'm saying anything that people don't know by saying that traditional agencies can be difficult to work for that when you're an employee of those agencies, you are expected to bill a certain amount of hours with a client per week if you are a billable person. And so let's just say, for math's sake, that you have to bill 37 hours a week out of your 40 that you're allotted for full-time salary, it's my best guess, and from some experience, that you are actually working way more than 40 hours and you're not even the person running the business, you're just managing your own inbox and your own clients. Um, so I would say, like, multiply that by a thousand.

Speaker 4: 14:11

Uh, bill as few hours as possible, make as much money as possible. Uh, have as few clients as possible. Make as much money as possible, have as few clients as possible, have a huge referral network. So you're not you're not actually selling as often as you think you'll need to? And just you know, make big, make big assumptions about how long things will take, assume more.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Yeah, don't underestimate what those things are. Is what you're saying?

Speaker 4: 14:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Yeah, saying yeah, yeah. It's funny because when I started my career in like it, management, consulting and and when I was running projects and having to handle the a lot of the billing stuff and, you know, going through people's hours that they tracked which is another thing that people are probably not used to right, tracking their hours down to 15 minute increments or whatever it is that you use that I always we had this saying, as people who are managing accounts was like charge all your time but don't go over budget, right. So I was often cutting hours that were otherwise billable, that we would to in terms of what we would actually charge clients, because we had to sort of play that game. Now this is one of the big, big consulting companies, so oh fine, they can eat it.

Speaker 1: 15:22

Who cares? Yeah, there was to be trimmed, if you will. So anyway, all this resonates as consistent. I think the yeah, I mean I said it. I think it's only somewhat ingested. It's 150% of your time if you're going to do this Right, but it's probably greater than a hundred percent. It's not a 40 hour a week thing. Unless you are really really good, you get some great clients, right. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about freelancing, is that it can be whatever you want.

Speaker 3: 15:59

Yeah, it doesn't. You know, I wouldn't say that, oh, if you're going to become a freelancer, then you're going to be working 60 hours a week. But that was certainly my impression of freelancing before I joined Lauren and started Emmy Collective, was you know? It seems interesting. I know that I could certainly make more money, but I know that I will be working way more than I really want to be working and I just can't do that Like. I need the security of being in-house.

Speaker 3: 16:14

I was at an agency for a long time. I really enjoyed it. I went back in-house for a little while and there were a lot of things that I really liked, like benefits Benefits are nice, paid time off also something that is nice yeah, great. All things you don't have in your freelancer. But the point is really that you can make this whatever you want it to be. If you are someone that only wants to work 25 hours a week, that only work 25 hours a week, you're going to make less money. But maybe it's because you are doing something else, or maybe you are like doing some childcare that you'd otherwise have to pay for. Whatever it may be, and I think that's the real thing that is appealing about freelancing to a lot of people is that it's it's very flexible.

Speaker 1: 16:52

Yeah, wait, so let's. Let's talk about the origin story of Emmy Collective. So the two of you started that not that long ago, right Within the last what two years or so?

Speaker 3: 17:01

So how did that come about? How?

Speaker 1: 17:03

does it work?

Speaker 3: 17:05

What a great question. Well, lauren and I are a beautiful combination of really smart and sort of impulsive, and we knew each other only sort of through Kimmy Corrigan, who is another really wonderful marketing ops person out there. Kimmy was one of my clients a long time ago and Kimmy was Lauren's boss a long time ago. Right, she was your boss. Never, no, never no, you just worked with her.

Speaker 4: 17:32

No, we were co-workers and then, when we split ways, we just stayed in touch. Okay.

Speaker 3: 17:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 17:41

I was her boss.

Speaker 3: 17:42

No, I'm just kidding, that's not true, we were connected through Kimmy is the punchline. Okay, we like follow each other on Instagram because we both knew Kimmy and we were both Marketo champs together at one point in time, though we never really knew each other because I was always at a Tumos and she was always at Raffy Pals, so we were like sworn enemies for a long time. Yeah, number one. Yeah, yeah, and Lauren had been freelancing. Do you want to talk about that?

Speaker 4: 18:09

Yeah. So the way Revenue Pulse was working in the early days was we were contract only at the time, which was really great because I had like two really little kids at the time they were like two and new or something and so I actually did not want to do 40 hours, although maybe I did at first. My goal was to work less, make the same amount of money and spend more time with my kids, and so Revenue Pulse grew as they should. Congratulations to them. But eventually it turned out that their business model changed such that they started hiring primarily employees and at the same time COVID happened and my kids were trying to like log into computers at the age of four and do school and like does it really work?

Speaker 1: 19:01

And so I became a homeschool consultant instead.

Speaker 4: 19:05

So I left Revenue Pulse actually to like homeschool my kids for a year, homeschool my kids for a year.

Speaker 4: 19:12

And during that time I did have a friend who asked if I wanted to do like a little bit of work, five hours a week, 10 hours a week of part-time consulting.

Speaker 4: 19:20

I was like sure it could be good to like talk to adults again. So I started doing that. But pretty quickly they wanted more work, they wanted 20 hours a week and that really was just not something that I was willing to do at the time, given that I was teaching three kids how to read. So I actually just asked a friend who was in marketing if she wanted some of the work and she was like, yeah, cool, and that really was the start of emmy, because all of a sudden it was the two of us on one client, um, rather than just just myself as a freelancer. And honestly, that's like a problem that you have is like now I need to manage, I have more work than I want, or I have work that I actually don't know how to do, like I'm asking questions, like I don't know, like they gave me this thing and I guess I'll just figure it out because I don't really have a team. You know like.

Speaker 4: 20:15

I guess I'll Google it.

Speaker 3: 20:18

Yeah, yeah. And at the same time, I was at a Tumos for a while and then I left and went back in house. I just like wanted to take a break from consulting. I had another baby and then, while I was on maternity leave, I got laid off and it was not ideal, but it was like a vintage 2022 layoff Before all the layoffs were happening. I got laid off.

Speaker 4: 20:43

She was laid off before it was cool.

Speaker 3: 20:45

Yeah, there were still lots of jobs, so that was good. And I started putting some feelers out there and Lauren reached out to me and was like oh, I have this idea. And I basically was like go away, I can't do this. And she wouldn't go away, she wouldn't leave me alone. And we went on what we now call co founder speed dating, where I said if you actually want to do something together, then perhaps we should meet in person for the first time in our lives. I will come visit you in Ohio and bring my newborn with me. And she said, no, Ohio sucks, let's go to Florida. So we went to Siesta Key.

Speaker 4: 21:30

Ohio does not suck but it was like March April early May.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah, it was winter, ohio does suck, then yeah.

Speaker 3: 21:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:38

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 21:41

So that's it, am I continuing, but you're not like a traditional agency, though, right?

Speaker 1: 21:45

No, we don't call ourselves a traditional agency.

Speaker 3: 21:47

Basically, we went to CS2Key and we were just thinking of all the things that we loved about consulting and all the things that we hated about consulting Like what were the parts of it that made it really really not fun. And we knew that, with my network and Lauren's network combined, like we had some overlap but honestly not as much overlap as you would think that we could make something that was really cool, that we could make something that was really cool. Lauren was always very interested in doing this for freelancers and I was always very much, not because I had never been a freelancer, I was not interested in being a freelancer. So we talked a lot about the reasons I didn't like freelancing and we've tried to solve for at least some of those with Emmy. We can't solve for everything, but a lot of the like I'm spending so much time doing things I'm not getting paid for. You know, if I run into a client problem, like I'm just really on my own to figure that out, or I have, you know, work come up that I can't take, or it's like outside of the boundaries that I've set for myself of how many billables I want to do.

Speaker 3: 22:48

And that's why we built ME Collective. It was a way for us to kind of pool resources both time, energy, effort, finances, finance, accounting people all of that into one to make freelancing a little bit easier and more accessible for everyone. And so we don't call ourselves an agency. We're like we call ourselves an agency-ish. We're somewhere between a more traditional agency and working directly with a freelancer.

Speaker 3: 23:16

So all of our consultants are freelancers, but our client relationships are with MA Collective as a group, which means that when work comes into us, we will assign one or more consultants to it and functionally, day to day, their relationship with the client is really no different than if it was work they were taking outside of ME Collective.

Speaker 3: 23:35

But because the client relationship is with all of us, that means if that consultant is going on vacation and needs someone to cover for them or they run into some sort of problem that they just need someone to brainstorm with them. Or even the client is like oh, I need someone that can do HubSpot admin support and get my campaigns out the door. And oh, by the way, do you know someone that can make me a new email template? We can provide all of those things for them under the same umbrella, which makes it a little easier for them too, and when you're on your own often you are working on your own it is a little unusual to get to work on a team with other consultants when you are independent, so I think our consultants really enjoy that too getting to work on these little fractional teams that we build for our clients.

Speaker 4: 24:20

Yeah, I think that's my favorite thing, like beyond just being a network and a resource for freelancers, are like these power teams that we get to create in some projects. We had one of our members had like an ex company that they work for. Come to them and ask them to do like a Marketo to Marketo migration. Like ask them specifically, like will you do this? And they were like, yes, I will, but I'm going to need like seven other people on this massive project. So let's like go through Emmy and build a real team that you know can get this project complete for you. So that I think has been like the most fun that I have and things that I think we couldn't have really dreamed up, like what this could turn into.

Speaker 1: 25:07

So, Naomi, I thought it looked like you might have a question.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Well, not so much a question, but just a comment from something that's in your head, Like, well, you know, when you're working on a client problem, sometimes you're the only one. You know there's no other resources to fall back on or to talk to. I'm like, well, one could argue, you have an entire marketing ops Slack community that you could fall back on.

Speaker 3: 25:26

That's so true and, honestly, that's a lot. A lot of people rely on that, which is wonderful, but you are really asking for people's free labor, for something that you are going to turn around and get paid for, which you can do here and there for a long time, but it's tough to do habitually, totally.

Speaker 2: 25:44

And when I say that I do mean things like. I often find that if I have a question or a problem that I'm dealing with, usually somebody else has had that already, so you can just search the community see if it's there. Otherwise, if you post that question and there is a response, it's often not like wow, this is this one situation that nobody ever has ever had. Someone else probably has something very similar, and it's kind of building onto that resource of information for people as well.

Speaker 3: 26:10

So that's how I see it of information for people as well, so that's how I see it?

Speaker 3: 26:12

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 26:12

I will say one other, just mild rebuttal is when you are also in the business of selling yourself to the people who are in that Slack community, it is a little, maybe more vulnerable than you always want to appear to ask questions Only because I will say I will speak for only myself when I say I've certainly felt this way both when I was at an agency and now at ME.

Speaker 3: 26:41

Asking a question in a community like that sometimes puts me in the position of like, oh no, what if one of my prospects looks at this and says I thought they were an expert, why do they have questions? Which, of course, is a huge fallacy of reasoning. Right, like, everyone has questions, of course, but as these communities get bigger and bigger, like, there are more and more very senior people in them, which is wonderful, but they may not have the context of, hey, everyone has questions sometimes. So it is nice to be able to work with other people who are one like on your side and two will also get paid to help you with a client problem, which is really great.

Speaker 2: 27:21

For sure, that's a great point too, but just kind of like piggybacking off of the the you know growing as a community and the questions. I think in general you know the marketing ops community grows with the people as we kind of mature and get education ourselves and just mind share and whatnot but totally understand, like the vulnerability from it. I think that's an important point to make for sure.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Yeah, I can see that. I mean it's interesting that you if you have you now, I'm curious, sydney, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Have you experienced a time where that has happened, where somebody has called you out on that like thought you have? Yet I'm now I'm curious, sydney, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. Have you experienced a time where that has happened, where somebody has called you out on that Like thought you were the expert, kind of thing?

Speaker 3: 27:57

Not that anyone has told me, but I don't know. I mean, I've certainly experienced close lost opportunities before. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:04

I mean I can't, I don't. I can't remember a time where I was reading stuff in the Slack community and I'm like, shouldn't this person know it? That just has never crossed my mind. But if you were already paying her a lot of money to do it yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:19

Sometimes your clients are in there too. When you run into a problem for a client and then you have to go into the Slack community and ask the question, there, certainly could be the impression of well couldn't, I have just done that myself?

Speaker 1: 28:33

They're going to ask these people to tell them the answer for free.

Speaker 1: 28:36

My guess, though, is those things, though, even though they may have occurred somewhere else and it's not necessarily quote new, new problem, it doesn't mean that that person has experienced that particular one. I mean, to me I go back to yeah, I was some of these communities really started, with some of the vendors having really robust and active communities themselves. So Marketo had one, Eloqua had one, and I remember like there were always people going in there and asking questions, even some that seemed to be basic, or and then some people did get shamed, Like sometimes there would already be a thread about something Like hey, did you already do? Did get shamed, Like sometimes there would already be a thread about something Sure.

Speaker 3: 29:14

Like hey, did you already do a search, right, but I mean, but how would you have felt if you logged into the Marketo community one day and you saw that your pro-serve consultant posted the question? That was the question you just asked them. Not ideal, not ideal.

Speaker 4: 29:32

You know, but I think that the better way for consultants to use these types of communities and I feel like we've talked about this before is like answering questions for others is beneficial to really building your personal brand, so, especially if you're a freelancer and you're like, well, I need assistance, and I know this person's name because they are always giving of their time and knowledge.

Speaker 4: 29:57

You know, in the communities um, that's the way that I see that like consultants and freelancers who, um, you know, want to use community in a great of course. Number one, just to be a part of community, which we all want to do, um, but number two, to, like, promote yourself a little bit or build your, build your network and your own personal brand.

Speaker 1: 30:19

So, sydney, answer your question right. How would I have felt about that? I, you know, I I can't remember ever being in that position, so I don't know and I didn't because they don't do that.

Speaker 1: 30:29

Well, but I I I think about how I probably would act is, first, I would. If they didn't talk to me about it first, I probably would have been called hey, before you go, do that, because if someone figures out who it is, maybe it's proprietary stuff, whatever but if I hadn't also thought about it, I'd probably want to learn, like you know, tell me more about why you went there, like who would you go to in this community? So I mean, maybe that's just me, like I would. I would want to take a lesson from it, not necessarily, you know, beat them over the head with it. At least that's how I would like to think I would handle it. How would I really handle it? It probably all depends on how that person handled it too.

Speaker 3: 31:11

You know, I think the real truth is that most clients would be just fine, they wouldn't care. But I just want I just experienced enough not great clients out there that I'm just always scared, you know.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Oh yeah, well, those are. Those are clients, people hiring freelancers and consultants who underestimate what their level of involvement needs to be. Probably, I think that's one of the lessons that came from the conversation that Jessica and I had Just hiring a freelancer doesn't mean your job is done. There's still things that you have to do. I don't know if I'm infamous for this, but if you talk to people who I've hired as consultants or freelancers, I tell them a lot of times, like part of your job is to hold me accountable. When you need something from me and I'm not providing it, you get to call me out. Yeah, because I know me.

Speaker 3: 32:03

Yeah, I mean, I think that is a great example of the like soft skills consulting stuff that is easy to underestimate the value and importance of when you're thinking about heading out on your own. Like it's easy to kind of back yourself into a corner and like, oh well, no one's, no one's given me anything to do, Like I don't know what I should be doing, so I'm just doing nothing. But that's, that's not it right. Like you have to reach out, you have to do your own audit, figure out, like find out what the problem is that needs to be solved, because there's always something sure yeah yeah yeah, absolutely all right.

Speaker 1: 32:35

So that's fascinating. I think it's an interesting model that I've not seen a lot of, definitely not in this space. I've heard of maybe one other in a very different one, but so, um, what is your take on the current state of the market? Like, is there? I know we've got a lot of people who are either have moved into this kind of world or are considering it. You know what's? What are you finding? Is the appetite out there for hiring people like that, and are there specific niches that are stronger rather than weaker? I mean, you mentioned a lot of people with technical experience are doing this, but what about, like strategy projects where someone's helping like rethink an organization or something like that?

Speaker 3: 33:17

Yeah. So in terms of the market for freelancers, like I will say, we have 57 active consultants at Emmy Collective and a waiting list to be a consultant at Emmy Collective that's twice as long. There's 1 million billion people who want to be a freelancer right now, which is great. It is, I think, definitely a function of the job market. There is, you know, plenty of work. There's plenty of work out there, just you know. The same reason that there's plenty of people available to become a freelancer is because of all the layoffs. There's also plenty of work to be done. A lot of companies that have to reduce headcount obviously still have work to be done and it's much easier for them to secure budget to get a contractor or consultant than it is to get an additional headcount. It also just looks like a little bit less of a business risk to the company to take on a contractor or consultant than it does to take on a full-time headcount, which is great.

Speaker 3: 34:14

I was actually talking to one of our consultants not too long ago about this. The market is great for consulting work. Right now, there's a lot of consulting work out there, but I'm seeing the job market start to rebound a little bit. Some of the consulting work is drying up a little bit and I was like man, what's going to happen when this really dries up? And I think what's going to happen is all the people who did not hire a consultant for the last couple of years are going to realize that all of their stuff is falling apart and those people will be hiring consultants to come in and fix it. So it can be a little feast or famine at times on work that's available, but there's always work out there to be had and we have always been very pro abundance mindset. There's enough work for everybody, like let's share and collaborate as much as possible.

Speaker 1: 35:06

That's interesting. I'm glad to hear on the one side that you're seeing signs of improvement on the hiring side. I know there's a lot of people who probably take that as a positive sign, so that's interesting. It's interesting that you bring up that point about that. There's less liability by hiring freelancers and consultants.

Speaker 1: 35:31

I think that's, I think, one of the things and I do some coaching and mentoring of people, especially who are new to managing a budget or managing teams, and one of the things I talk about is like I'm not. I wouldn't be considered creative in the way that most people think of it. Right, I am not going to. I'm not an artsy kind of creative person, but I'm really good at juggling resources, especially financial ones, and I've always been really good about knowing if I've got some money in my, in my budget that is not allocated to something and I can't move it to headcount, which has a whole different set of financial concerns about it, and I can use that to bring in somebody, uh, even temporarily, to work on a project. I figured I've done that many times where I figured out how to do that and I think if you're a freelancer and you don't know how the hiring managers think about managing their budgets. You need to go figure that out. Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:25

It is much easier less overhead.

Speaker 4: 36:27

Yeah, the secret is that they don't consider freelancers human beings. I'm just kidding. Consider us more of a tech and services line item than a headcount, and they are two totally separate budgets.

Speaker 3: 36:46

So you said something earlier that I want to make sure I go back and address too, about what types of work we see are the most in demand. I will say that most of the work and this is certainly a function of the way we position ourselves I would not say that I hesitate to speak for the entire job market, but most of the work that we see coming in is for technical services. I need a HubSpot admin. I need a Marketo admin. I need a Salesforce admin Wonderful.

Speaker 3: 37:11

I do get a fair amount of consultants that come in and do not want to do technical, hands-on keys type work are more interested in like oh, I would like to help you. I would like to discuss your marketing tech strategy with you. I'd like to talk to you about how to build your marketing operations team. We do not see a lot of work like that come in. Very often the easier work to outsource is the technical work. It is a little more finite. It is easier to understand when you're trying to get a budget approved. I need a Marketo admin to help me build this thing. That's easier to talk about. It can come across a little fluffy and be like I was bringing in a consultant.

Speaker 1: 37:54

I bet Naomi could go, could speak to this too. I know from my standpoint when I've looked at that there's there. It's a much more tangible ask to say I need to bring a resource to do X, y and Z Exactly you know this percentage of their time every, every day, every week, for this period of time, and as long as it's something that we can go point to like emails got out the door, we cleaned up our database whatever those things are, Whereas the strategy piece is important as it is, and I'd like I'd.

Speaker 3: 38:23

I'd follow that.

Speaker 1: 38:25

That would where I would probably lean towards. But I my what I've found is, if I've talked to people about doing that like as a side thing, right that there's not much of that and it's.

Speaker 3: 38:35

No, I think often like organizations want that type of strategic direction, like the call should be coming from inside the house. You know, like they don't necessarily inherently trust that someone from the outside is going to give them proper strategic direction. Where it's much easier to trust Like, okay, we have this platform, this person's an expert in it Fine, like they can build whatever they need to build. But a lot of the strategic stuff is, you know, super specific to the business. And even when it is a little bit more focused on marketing ops because you're selling it as like this is strategic advisory about how we're going to do this thing for our business the people that have to sign the checks on it are just like no, we have advisors, we have a board, we have whoever.

Speaker 4: 39:13

Well, and I do think it's a function of budgets, potentially now, in the climate as well, it's like we need to survive this cycle, like let's talk about it next year, and I, you know Sydney, you kind of hinted at this. It's not that I don't necessarily think that marketing apps, could you know, benefit from that type of consulting, like a tech sec assessment or build or something like that, but if the people signing the checks don't necessarily have the like belief in that department or that function, then they're certainly not going to be like here, yes, like take all the money you need to make this the best function possible for our business.

Speaker 1: 39:55

Yeah, so the way I would think about it.

Speaker 1: 39:57

So I agree with all that right, and I've been in the spot where I think it would be useful. What I think is missed a lot of times by the senior executives, who don't fully understand all this stuff. They probably don't understand marketing in general because and this is not a knock against these other executives just they don't have the experience, um, and so it's easy to to point fingers. What I think is underestimated and this probably applies to other functional areas beyond marketing is that you either have don't have the skill set that you need to do that kind of strategic thinking and work or, more importantly, you don't have time within within the team. And so that's where I think the benefit of bringing in somebody, even if it's temporarily maybe even think of something like a chief of staff, you know, for the CMO, who's going to help do this sort of strategic project planning kind of thing might, might be a good use of that money and generate a lot of leverage from that. All that being said, I think it's a really hard sell internally as well.

Speaker 3: 41:03

Yeah, yeah, I agree, it's hard, it's valuable, but the job market being what it is right now, marketing ops has always kind of been at the bottom of the stack anyway, which is unfortunate. Most companies are just trying to get by with like one marketing ops headcount just to keep the ship afloat, or even zero marketing ops headcount, and maybe this one consultant, 10 hours a week, can keep the ship afloat. It's just, it's tough right now.

Speaker 1: 41:29

Yeah, naomi, have you had experience with any of that, this kind of stuff, have you? Have you brought in freelancers much at all, or do you?

Speaker 2: 41:37

no, actually not at all. The only um time that I've been here at efi it's uh. The only time we had a external um uh vendor was when we did our marketo implementation and then we brought in a partner to help us with that. But even then it was more so just getting us initially ramped up and then towards the end of the engagement it was kind of double checking our homework right, so like we would do the work and then they come in, help validate and be kind of that like sounding board or resource to guide us the best practices and whatnot, after we had kind of gotten the hang of things before we actually did the full cut over and went live.

Speaker 2: 42:18

But aside from that, I've never had to, either because there has been the resources on the team to do so, or I've hired and stacked the team in a way that you know like everyone on the team can do. You know there's like a 50% overlap, let's say, and then everyone on the team can do. You know there's like a 50 overlap, let's say, and then everyone on the team has their own specialty, so there's a web developer, email developer, graphic designer, data ops person, that kind of thing. So they would. You know I would never have to go out outsource any of that, um, but more resources are always great.

Speaker 4: 42:50

That's not to say that I won't do that totally, I mean sydney and I well, and and Sydney and I always say about headcount specifically like even if it's to our detriment, if a client gets headcount, we're like you should take the headcount.

Speaker 3: 43:03

You should always take the headcount. Never say no to headcount.

Speaker 2: 43:06

And there have been instances where you know there have been situations where not necessarily I've had to make cases, not necessarily for people, but maybe for certain. You know I call them like micro tools, because it's a small plugin or something that I only need for a certain period of time or it's just something that has like a limited shelf life and I find that if you can prove to shift budget a little bit like you know, I'm going to reduce the number of seats in this because it's not being properly utilized as much as something else and then we can take this 10K and put it towards this, like that sometimes can help too, because then it's just a lateral, there's no like impact to budget. You're just kind of shifting funds around and that can possibly be a strategy for bringing in like freelance or consultants as well, if there is the additional need to flex throughout the fiscal year.

Speaker 3: 43:57

Yeah, I've also definitely done that for clients before, too Like come in and been like, why are you paying for this? You need to cancel this contract. Let's talk about how to get your Marketo database down, because this is a bunch of garbage. Let me fight with support for you. Let me tell you why you don't need to buy a third webinar platform. Um, you know there's there's inherent value even in like actual budget savings and having an expert around to advise you that way, whether it's someone that's in-house or it's a consultant completely.

Speaker 1: 44:25

Yeah, I agree so, um, I want to shift gears a little bit and I think we've hinted at this sort of two things that I don't know if they could necessarily go together, but for some reason they're coming together in my head right now. But one is the difference between sort of moonlighting doing something on the side versus sort of going all in on freelancing. I'd like to get your perspectives on how would you advise people to be thinking about when to make that transition, if they're thinking about it and if there's any particular things about moonlighting. Like, I know one person who does moonlighting who I think is undercharging but is totally happy with like the work that she's getting and has usually busy as much as she wants to be, but the other is and I can't remember who mentioned it right, but like building that personal brand. Are there any tips you've got for if you're going to be doing this? Like, how do you start establishing yourself, whether it's a community, is or online or whatever?

Speaker 3: 45:26

I would say, first of all, like you should work on establishing your personal brand well before you quit your full-time job. It will take a long time, a lot of investment into building your personal brand before you see any return on clients coming in from that. So, yes, being active on LinkedIn even though LinkedIn is really annoying sometimes, it's important. Being active in the Slack communities is really important. And again, it's not about like hello, I'm Sydney, please come buy my services. It's about demonstrating your value as an expert by answering people's questions, by being an active part of the group. When you're doing this really well, you never need to say hello, I'm Sydney, please come buy my services. They know, they know you're smart and they know how to find you. But yes, the personal branding, you start well before you quit your full time job and you know moonlighting is kind of an optional step in this. It is nice. It's a little bit of like a risk mitigation to start moonlighting.

Speaker 3: 46:19

Not everyone can like. Not everyone's life supports doing any extra work outside of their full time job. Not everyone's employer is cool with the moonlighting. Like it, just. It totally depends. Like it just it totally depends, um. But if you can, then moonlighting is great. Do it for a few months, save up some money, determine what that threshold is of like. Okay, I just need to get one more client or two more clients, and then I'll feel good about quitting my full-time job, like that's a.

Speaker 4: 46:43

That's way many people start yeah, yeah, one thing that, um, uh, I was going to name a name, but I'm not going to because I don't know if they'd want me to share.

Speaker 4: 46:52

Yeah, don't do that, but one thing that early in my freelancing life that was shared with me was not so much like by client or by hour or even by work, but start to manage your time by the amount of money that you're making and the amount of money that you need to make or that you want to make in order to maintain the money that you need to make or that you want to make in order to maintain the lifestyle that you want to maintain.

Speaker 4: 47:15

Otherwise, if you don't really have like a focus on that, it can easily get out of hand with boundaries if you feel like, oh, you need one more client, but it's way more or way less than you want to be taking. And then this person you know showed me that their own layouts like when they have enough money per month or per quarter, they're done staffing themselves and they can kind of take a break there. And I thought that was really just empowering to be like all right, I have enough. Because I think the tendency for a freelancer is to think that they're Sydney already mentioned that there's highs and lows fees for famine, but that it's always going to be famine, like you're never going to have enough or you never going to feel secure in the amount of work that you have, um, and I'm sure it happens, but like I haven't seen it in the seven years that I've been freelancing, um, that I haven't been able to get myself to, you know, the income that I've wanted, based on the my own work that I've been doing.

Speaker 1: 48:15

That's good, that's a good point to like know what you really want out of it. That's, I think that's probably something that everybody's thought about. All right, what one more question, I think, and then we're going to probably have to wrap it up here. But, uh, the you mentioned the importance of soft skills multiple times through this. What, what are some of the most of soft skills? Multiple times through this. What are some of the most important soft skills you think people should be preparing for, especially if it's something that they might not have ever thought about?

Speaker 3: 48:39

I think you should be funny. I always like to tell you should be funny. That's a requirement if you want to work with us. You have to be funny. I'm just kidding. I'm not really kidding, but the story I always like to tell related to this is when I just started consulting at Atumos. I had never consulted before. I'm not really kidding, but the story I always like to tell related to this is when I just started consulting at a Tumos. I had never consulted before.

Speaker 3: 48:57

I was still very early in my career. I was on one client, thankfully, with someone else who was more experienced than me, and I was on a call like our weekly check-in, and they were like, okay, sydney, what are you working on this week? And I was just like I don't really have anything going on. So you know, just let me know if you need anything. Should never do that. Don't do that.

Speaker 3: 49:21

But it's you know you every single day that you are a consultant, whether you are at an agency or you are freelancing, you are selling yourself. It is not just you know, talking about the value that you're providing, but it is providing the value and making it clear what value you are providing. I think that is super important. It is easy to just kind of float along and be like well, everyone seems happy and I seem happy, so I'm sure this is fine. No, like you need to be communicating every week. This is what I'm doing, this is what I'm planning to do, this is what I'm blocked on. This is what I need from you. You need to make it very easy for them to work with you, so they will want to keep working with you.

Speaker 4: 50:02

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 50:03

I mean consultants are a lot of money right and I think that people budget owners are very aware of how much they spend on this time. So even in meetings, please be self-aware of how much time you're talking about nonsense. Not that small talk isn't good, because of course you want to build that relationship, but I've been on calls with consultants where it's like nine minutes into the call and they're still talking about what they did over the weekend. So time is valuable. Time is very valuable and they're paying you for your time so it's.

Speaker 1: 50:38

I have an interesting, I have a I don't know if this is a funny story or not, but early in my career I did consulting too, but it was like a very different domain. It was it type stuff and I did stuff with financial systems. So we had a client that I where I was the lead on it. We were embedded with the accounting team because we were implementing an accounting system and some reporting. And I had a guy on my team who I was still pretty young then, but he was younger than me and he would go out and party and he did just. He was.

Speaker 1: 51:07

Work was fine, but the word, I think what he did. He came in, he'd started talking about it fairly loudly around all the accountants who wrote all the checks and I had to pull him aside one time and I said look, I don't care if you go out, I don't care if you talk about it to me, but you can't talk about it like that here. These are people like they see how much they're paying us and you cannot do that and it's just that's the kind of self-awareness you get. You have to have, I think, is which thing? Um, yeah, I think we've touched on other things like knowing your value and negotiating and stuff like that. So this has been fantastic. Um, and you know, I would love for if people want to catch up with you, lauren sydney, if they want to learn more about what y'all are up to, any collective whatever. What's my?

Speaker 3: 51:52

dms man, we are both in we're both in the slack communities we're both in the slack community, we are both on linkedin please find us there and you can also go to our website, which is emikocom, and see all of our stuff there, and you'll find our podcast there, if you are interested in torturing yourself in that way.

Speaker 1: 52:17

Yeah, all good. Well, thank you again. Thank you to Naomi, who had to drop a little bit early, so appreciate her being on and sharing her insight as well, and thanks to all of our audience out there for continuing to support us. We look forward to sharing more of this with you in the future. Bye everyone.

Speaker 4: 52:37

Bye, thank you.