How to Kickstart Your Freelancing Career: HerHQ Founder Hollie Prescott

In this episode, we sit down with HerHQ founder Hollie Prescott, who has built a freelancing community of over 20,00 women. We take a deep dive into how she got started and transformed her career from working for companies like ASOS, Harpers Bazaar and Saatchi & Saatchi to starting her own business.

Having worked with industry powerhouses in marketing, account management and event organisation, Hollie talks about the reality of transitioning to freelancing, how to get started on your own, how to win your first business and how much you can really earn as a freelancer.

How to kickstart a freelance career

Claudia: Holly, welcome to the Waddyado podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you.

Hollie: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Claudia: Well, firstly, for the listeners, I think it's good to give them a little bit of context. Holly and I actually used to go to college together. So we've known each other for quite a few years and recently reconnected.

Hollie: Yeah, so cool that we go back such a long way. I mean, you know, it's kind of giving our age away, but it was a few, few years ago that we were in college and it's so cool to reconnect with people that you used to go to school with, college with, and you feel like you maybe haven't caught up with them in ages and you're not really sure what path they took in life, but then you realize that actually you're both currently pursuing the same sort of things or you actually do have quite a lot in common. So it's been really cool.

Claudia: Definitely, and it's seen both of us, our lives intertwine around moving abroad, you know, I've lived in Canada and Australia, you've also lived in Australia, the US, and you're currently, where are you based right now, Holly?

Hollie: Currently in Bangkok, yeah, we've spent the last couple of months traveling, so in Costa Rica, Colombia, now we're in Bangkok, we'll be heading to Italy, back to the UK, and then, I don't know, maybe we'll move to Bali, we're not sure.

Claudia: Living the dream, as some might say. Well, Let's get into it and give the listeners a little bit of insight into who Hollie Prescott is.

The Journey from Freelancer to Community Leader

Claudia: So, how would you describe what you do for a living to someone who isn't in your field or industry?

Hollie: Yes, so right now what I do and I've been doing it for the last four years, I guess a little backstory to that. is I started as a freelancer so I you know quit my nine-to-five job I decided to go traveling I remember at the time thinking I really wish I could work online but the only people I thought worked online were travel bloggers and I was like I really don't like writing blogs so I don't want to do that. So I thought, okay, I guess there's nothing I can do. And I just, you know, I was kind of looking online.

Anyway, I realized that I actually have, you know, skills as a graphic designer. And so I started seeing posts or something, a friend of a friend was looking for someone to design some things for her. And I was like, oh, hey, I think I can do that. So anyway, that's essentially what started my freelance career. I did branding, website design, graphic design, helped a ton of people with a ton of things for a good couple of years.

Then 2020 hit. And I had already been working remotely for the last like two and a bit years. That was kind of what I was doing. I was very used to Zoom. I worked with clients who were all over the world while I traveled all over the world. And I was just really used to navigating that online remote world. So everything that happened then in 2020 wasn't really a It didn't really shake up the way that I worked in the way that it shaked up pretty much every single other industry in the world.

And so during that time, I had made like a lot of friends online. And me and a friend kind of got together to host just some, like, calls for people, just going through it. We created a free community. And over time, over 2020, that free community essentially became, I guess, a business of its own. So, I continued freelancing.

But then the community got so big and there was so much opportunity there with so many people who, for whatever reason, maybe they were parents and they'd had to reduce their hours at work because a lot of people were having to homeschool their children because the schools were shut, but they were also trying to work. So they were looking for something more flexible. There was also a lot of people who had got let go from their jobs, made redundant because they just fundamentally worked in industries that were no longer available. If you worked in hospitality, basically, goodbye, you are not employed anymore. So, essentially, I decided to pivot all my attention towards that and slowly phase out my freelancing work and then focus all my attention on building a community for freelancers and teaching people how to do that. So, that's essentially what I do now.

Claudia: Fabulous. I love that so much. You've literally been a freelancer and now teach freelancers exactly how to do it and give them the confidence to do it as well. So, you're kind of an inspo to the freelance community, I would like to say. So, that's incredible.

So, I'm going to take us a little bit further back actually. So, when obviously you actually did a maths degree and then you pivoted, can you just tell the listeners how and why you pivoted and also what you then went on to do because I think that's also a really good insight into your background and the brands that you work with and you know your agency experience as well.

Hollie: Yeah so when I was at school I was always really good at maths and I always really liked art and design and they seem a bit opposite and I always felt like they were opposite and I always felt like there was these two sides to me that were a bit conflicting and I specifically remember being in school and thinking okay I think actually I'd like to be an interior designer I wanted to be an architect first and they were like, you're very good at science. So you can't do that. And I was like, interesting. Okay, I'll be an interior designer then because you don't need to be good at science for that. So that was what I wanted to do.

Claudia: You need to be good at science for an architect to be fair.

Hollie: Because you have to be good at like, like, I could do the math, but you have to be good at physics and stuff, I guess, because it's buildings. So and I, you know, was a C student when it came to science. So, you know, they were like, I think you might be shooting a bit high there. So, I felt a bit sad about that. But then I was like, okay, fine, I'll be an interior designer. So, that felt great. But then I don't know, I think I was around a lot of people, like, I remember my mum was always really into art. She's amazing at art. She does pottery. But she was like, you'll never earn any money if you go into art. And I was like, OK, well, I want to make good money. That's the party line. Yeah. Yeah. You'll never make any money if you do something creative. There's no money in art. There's no money in creativity.

So I was like, OK, well, I want to make money. There's money in maths. Like, maths is finance. People make money doing that. So I think that was my narrative. And honestly, that is the reason I chose it because I felt like I had two paths, be creative or do something that was math finance driven. And I decided at that time that one, I didn't want to have to stay living at home any longer because I would have had to do, because to do something creative, to get into a creative university, you had to then go to college and do a year to build a portfolio. And I was like, I'm uninterested in that. Like I, goodbye, just get me out of here.

So, I decided to go down the route to do a, I guess, a more predictable thing. I was like, okay, I'll just do maths. Also, my really close friends all studied very, like, professional things. You know, like, one of them was doing politics. One of them was doing architecture. The other was doing economics. So, I feel like all my best friends did very, like, traditional and, I don't know, smart thing. So I was like, yeah, I'll just do that too. And I'm going to go to university and that's fine.

So I picked university and decided I was going to do maths and finance. And I did that for a year. And in my second year, I wanted to do a study abroad. And I always knew that. I just always knew that I loved traveling. And I think I hadn't really properly weaved into the idea yet that it that I could, I don't know, pursue a business or that maths could be in a business, I was thinking I would just work at one of the top four accounting firms doing stuff to do with tax.

I think this is why your podcast is really cool because it teaches, it like opens people's eyes up to what's out there. And I feel like at the time, I didn't have a very big worldview of what was possible. So I thought I'm good at numbers. I will just work in numbers, which is usually something to do with finance, which is usually something to do with taxes. And I couldn't really comprehend much past that and yeah so I think that's why what you do is so cool because the earlier you can get inspiration, the earlier you can see what's possible. It means you can kind of make moves and explore. Or, you know, obviously it's never too late for anything. Um, okay. So I did math. I went to university. Uh, I then moved to Australia to study abroad. And at that time you could take electives, which meant that you essentially could study something, but it didn't count towards your grade. Like the U S do that, but the UK don't and Australia is a bit of a hybrid. So I took a marketing class and I was like, Oh my God, this is really cool. Like, I really like this.

Different Types of Freelancers in Her HQ Community

Claudia: So, okay. Obviously, you worked in some fabulous agencies and then took your life freelance. Obviously, you're running Her HQ now, which is a fabulous community for freelancers. What type of freelancers do you actually get within the community? For example, are they mostly marketeers? Talk to me about the makeup of Her HQ.

Hollie: Yeah, so there's lots of different types of freelancers. Generally speaking, I think the easiest way to become a freelancer is if you can pretty much do exactly what you do in your current nine to five and you can take that skill set and become a freelancer. So I'd say probably like 60% of the community is built up with people who take their immediate skills. So they might be doing email marketing or social media management in their current role. They might be a project manager or they might even work in HR, recruiting, they might work in graphic design, something like that. But that skill is something that they could transfer online and they could offer it to a smaller company in a fractional support because there's so many companies out there who don't need someone to help and support. So hiring freelancers makes perfect sense for them.

Claudia: That's a really good example of the different types of freelancers that you can get in there because a lot of people don't actually talk about HR or recruiting as an example. So I've actually, in my business, hired a lot of freelance recruiters as well for projects. And I think that's really nice to highlight that it's not just marketeers, there's lots of different freelancers that you can help with in the community. So guys, if you're looking to get a look at freelance work, definitely check out HerHQ.

Hollie: Basically, the other 40% of people who are in the community are people who are coming from maybe a background of they're a teacher or maybe they're a nurse or maybe they work in like customer support or maybe they work in retail or hospitality. Those people can't do exactly what they do. If you're a waitress or a bartender, you can't do that online. That's not immediately transferable. With those people, what we do is we help identify what transferable skills that they have, and then we also help them dig into, like, what they'd be excited about, what could they do, and I think that's why, you know, things like your podcast, that's why I have the podcast that talks about what kind of things can you do online, what things exist, because you don't know what you don't know, and I think that's, like, you know, I think our shared mission is to try and, like, decloud it, make it a bit easier for people to understand.

And so that's really the journey that we help those people with. So we do this thing, it's like an exercise that we take people through, which is to tally up like their expertise and their excitement. So you can have expertise in something, but you could also be excited to learn.

So you might actually, currently you're a bartender, but you maybe really love the idea of video editing. Maybe you do it for like friends and family, maybe occasionally you do it, you know, on your personal social media, but you've never really thought about it much more than that, but why not? Like you actually could offer that as a fractional support to, you know, five different businesses and help them with their social media or their YouTube channel or a video podcast.

So we're going to help people think, what could you do?

How could you apply those skills?

But then also how can you learn new skills?

And I really try to encourage people to learn new skills and not be afraid of it. because if you can stack the different skills that you have, for example, we have students who have worked as bartenders and then what they did, but they actually have helped, you know, their friend with their social media account and they've always been quite creative and they've then gone on to become social media managers for restaurants. So, they're kind of taking a bit of what they do, which is kind of their unique their unique selling point is they know the restaurant business really well. They were inside of it. So, they also probably have a lot of connections.

Then we take that with something that they're excited to learn and they might have some kind of skills in it but also, you know, nowadays with YouTube, Google, you can also go to places like Skillshare and Udemy that are quite cheap places to learn these things. You can learn that and then just start like pitching people, you know, get a bit of work for your portfolio, do some work for free. And then once you've kind of got like three or four things for your portfolio for free, like you're kind of off to the races and you can start charging, increasing those prices and then kind of see where the journey takes you. So those are the two types of people that we help. It's obviously a quicker journey if you can do pretty much exactly what you do already. Like if you already do email marketing for a company, you can just do exactly the same thing online. And you're probably going to be able to make that switch and find clients within a couple of weeks. If you want to learn something new, it's probably going to realistically take you a few months. But in that few months, you'll learn so much. So I think if you want to pick a new path, a few months really isn't that much time to put in for the rest of your life for a potential payoff.

Transitioning from Full-Time Employment to Freelancing

Claudia: Great. And how would you recommend people to make that transition? Because I think a lot of people will be thinking, well, that's great, but I'm going to have to take a dip in my income in order to supplement learning a new skill or in order to make time for those freelance projects. And I don't know how much I'm going to make to begin with. So let's cover off. Firstly, how do you recommend that people make that transition?

Hollie: Yeah, so first you have to get really clear on what do you want? What's the point of this? So is your goal really that you want to make an extra $300 to $400 a month? And that is your only goal. You're not trying to leave your nine to five. You're not trying to really make tons more money. You just want a little bit extra. If that's your goal, amazing. You can kind of just start. think, okay, when would you like to fit that work in? Because you're going to keep your nine to five, you're going to keep potentially whatever your commute is, nothing is going to change for the long term.

So then you just have to sit down and think, okay, do I, could I fit this work in on a Saturday, a Sunday, in the morning and evening on my lunch break, and then just calculate that. And that's quite easy because nothing's really going to change if that's your intention. It doesn't mean that, you know, long term, maybe a year from now, it does change. But if that's your initial intention, that's how I would do it.

If your intention is actually to eventually leave your nine to five, what I would encourage you to do is say, if that is your intention, then adjust your priorities accordingly. You can have everything, you just can't have everything all at once. So at some point, you will have to sacrifice things and you will have to compromise and you'll have to prioritize. And I think what you do in your life, how you show up and, you know, where you spend your chips every day is a reflection of your priorities. You can say you want something, but but your actions speak louder than words. You can say, oh, I want to make more money. I want to try to freelance. I want to do that. But if you don't make any steps towards it, do you even really want it?

I know that a lot of things can come up around fear and, you know, there's so many things that can come up against it, but you just have to be really honest with yourself. What are you willing to give up in pursuit of this goal? And so, On a really practical level, what I would recommend is thinking, how much money would you like to make?

If your initial goal is just to replace your salary, so say you make five grand a month right now, then I want you to carve out, okay, what is a realistic timeline? Potentially maybe something like six months. I recommend first saving an emergency fund. So you probably make five grand a month but most people shouldn't or hopefully aren't living like completely paycheck to paycheck and hopefully your fixed expenses aren't 95% of your income. Ideally your fixed expenses should be somewhere between 50 and 60% of your income and then you should have you know your guilt-free spending, you should be investing and saving. But that means if 50% of your income is on your fixed costs, so that's like your rent and your bills and your groceries and the things that you actually need to live, say that's two and a half grand, I'd recommend saving three months of that. So you've got seven and a half grand saved. What this does is it buys you time for that bridge of transition that you have to go through when you eventually decide that you would like to quit your nine to five and that you want to go all in on freelancing.

Once you've really secured your first few clients, you are going to have to work more. So you currently are, you've got your 40 hours of work a week, you probably have commute, you probably have other things. At some point, you're going to probably be working 10, maybe 20 hours a week. But the idea is that this is temporary. So you probably are for maybe like two months going to be working somewhere in the region of 60 to 80 hours a week. But the goal is then eventually you're going to remove that whole 40 hours a week.

So, usually what I tend to see happen is that people get to the stage where they've secured about 20 hours a week worth of freelancing work and usually you get paid slightly more on your freelancing hourly rate than in your full-time income. So you might be getting paid five grand a month as a freelancer and maybe you've secured two and a half grand a month on your 20 hours of freelancing. this is the perfect time to decide if you are ready to quit or not. Because remember that two and a half grand, if your fixed expenses are about 50% of your income, then technically you have got three months of that already saved. So if you didn't sign any client at all for three months, you're still gonna be fine. But you've got this huge safety net, which you do have freelancing clients that are going to cover your bills. So even if one of them canceled, even if you didn't find any more clients for two months, this is why I really encourage you to dive in with that safety net because it means that you make more choices from a place of abundance and excitement instead of scarcity and overwhelm.

So that's really like the best place to quit once you've secured enough freelance work in order to cover your basic fixed costs, like actual needs, then really once you've removed that whole 40 hours of work and just the mind space, like you know full-time work takes up a lot of your brain space too, then you have all of that time. So what's extremely likely is that then you're going to find more clients and fill your time. And at the minimum, again, it depends what your goals are, your goal might be like, I'm kind of good, like, I don't really need to make 10 more money, I'm actually looking to create a lot more time in my life. And it might be that actually you do, you're like, yeah, let's like, hit it hard. I want to build a team, I want to scale the business, like then go for it. I think it's really important to define what success means to you quite early on because otherwise you'll just chase, you know, some random person on the internet's idea of success.

Claudia: Yeah, I also think that it's really important to know that that will become an evolution as well. As you learn through the process of learning about yourself throughout the whole process of going freelance, running your own company, all that lovely stuff as we both experience.

Hollie: Definitely, and I think you don't need to know what you want You just need to know some of the things that you want in terms of lifestyle and why you're doing it. You don't need to know everything about how it's going to look, because like you said, it will evolve. So don't keep that from letting you start. Just start and you'll figure it out as you go along, because it's going to change anyway, so don't overthink it.

How much money can you earn as a freelancer?

Claudia: Exactly. Love it. Well, they are wonderful insights. So thanks so much for that, Hollie. I guess people are going to know how much money am I going to make in reality. So I know that you probably have your finger probably on the pulse with lots of different types of freelancers and obviously, it's going to range based on your profession and what you do and what you're good at. But could you tell us on average, I know you work a lot with the US market, but also maybe give context for a UK market. And if people are confused, I would recommend just checking out some exchange rates. But ultimately, could you give an average of people's earnings per month for different types of roles and freelance professions?

Hollie: Yeah, so I think a really good benchmark that can be applied to every single person in every single industry is actually that whatever your hourly rate is, even though technically in your corporate role, I know that you don't get paid per hour, but you basically do because you get a set salary per year with the expectation that you're going to work a certain amount of hours. So, do the math on that. Work out what you get paid. Generally speaking, as a freelancer, you can expect to charge somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 times your hourly rate. Just as like a very baseline. And that is essentially because when you work in a corporate environment, they are going to contribute to your pension, 401K, you know, whatever country, whatever system you're in for that. And as a freelancer, there's basically that risk element that you get paid a little more for. And then I think there is no reason, there's no real cap. I think it depends on the structure that you'd like to build. So if it's just gonna be you and yourself, and that's it, and you don't want any team members or anything like that, I think you can generally expect to sit at somewhere between an 80 and a 90% profitability, because you will have to pay for some subscription. So perhaps something like Calendly or Adobe or Zoom, you know, there's going to be like a few little expenses here and there. But what's actually really cool is then on your tax return, you also get to write off some business expenses. So for example, you use your internet in your home. If you buy a computer or you can also write off some of your phone bill. I mean, I'm not a tax professional, so you know, this isn't like tax advice, like go and consult a professional and hire a CPA or an accountant. But I'd say that kind of that's like a nice little plus and bonus. So yeah, I guess just does that answer your question?

Claudia: It totally does. That leads me really nicely actually on to what are the best bits about becoming a freelancer?

Hollie: Yeah, so I think the best bits is one, I think you're much more in control of the money that you make. There is no reason that you can't make six figures as a freelancer, as a solo freelancer. My personal perspective is that it's quite easy as a solo freelancer to make up to six figures. Once you want to make over $100,000, £100,000, you kind of are going to need some support from team members, your costs are going to start going up. And that's just when you kind of cross over into that. What business structure do you want? What lifestyle do you want? What are you going to build it into? But I'd say like, you can comfortably expect somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000 as a freelancer, even as a freelance

Claudia: If you've got quite a few years under your belt, you can expect in UK pounds to earn about £300, £350, £400, £500 a day. So that obviously definitely adds up five days a week. So that's also something to bear in mind. What are the good bits?

Hollie: Okay, so I think the best bits are the flexibility is you have true freedom over how you spend your time and most of us spend essentially a third of our life working, a third of our life sleeping and a third of our life doing other random shit. So for you to spend a third of your life working you kind of want to like it. You want to like what you do, who you work with. And I think the honest truth is a lot of people don't. A lot of people hate what they do. They hate their jobs. They hate their colleagues. They hate their commute. Like, so that's a third of your life that you really don't enjoy when I think, and when you work for a company, you don't really have that much control. Like, If you don't like your boss, you basically have two choices, leave or stay. But if you stay, nothing's going to change. So the only real option you have if you hate it that much is you can leave. And then that's, and it's like everything all at once. You have to quit your whole job and job applications are like, kind of a son of a bitch. Like, you know, job applications are a massive effort, like they're quite a big hike. And you're changing 100% for 100%.

What I think is really cool about freelancing is all your eggs aren't in one basket. So I think the average person, if you're working with clients on a retainer ongoing basis might have like five clients. So really, you're only putting 25% of your risk into each pot. And so if a client cancels, or you fire a client because you don't want to work with anymore, you've only lost 25% of your income. If you get made redundant in your full time job, overnight, you're going to lose 100% of your income. So I think I'd I think a lot of people, I think the big misconception is that freelancing is really risky. No, I think having a full-time job is really risky because you actually have no control. Like, and also you're not privy to a ton of information. So there's so many things that are going on in the business behind the scenes that you won't know about until suddenly it's, you know, you've got a week's notice, you're being made redundant, you're being fired, like whatever it is. And it can be totally out of your control. Also, you could have something else happen. And I think when there's so much pressure of staying your nine to five, it's so safe, it's so secure, when I actually think it's the opposite. If you're a freelancer, well, you can just work your butt off and go get another client. Like it's it's fine. And it's only 20% of your income. So if it takes you a month to replace 20% of your income, you still have 80%. And like we said earlier, ideally, your fixed cost should be somewhere between 50 and 60%. So actually, you can survive, like you might be cutting back on some of your luxuries, like you can't be going out to dinner every night, and you might have to scale back on a few things, but you're going to be fine. It's a tough position to be in to lose 100% of your income overnight.

Claudia: 100 percent. I would also add as well that obviously working with so many different clients, you have variety and then that means that you can learn about different types of organizations, new skill sets, and you can also probably upskill yourself more as a freelancer because you're not restricted by a company budget for professional development.

How to improve your skills as a Freelancer

Claudia: So what recommendations have you given to your community around upskilling?

Hollie: Yeah, so I think no matter what you do, what freelancer you are, what industry you go into, is you should always be upskilling constantly. So learning about new software, new developments, what's going on. So for example, if you're a project manager, be constantly looking like ClickUp is always releasing new updates, Asana is always doing new updates. You know, we're in the age of AI now there's constantly like new plugins being created new updates also look at the industry that you're in so perhaps you work with agencies you know be clued up on what is going on in the world of agencies. I don't know, you work with clients who are in the health and fitness industry so be clued up on what's going on in those industries like what are the trends also constantly be working on yourself and your skills because I think there's nothing better that sells you than your skills.

Like at the end of the day, as a freelancer, you are being paid for the skills that you bring to the businesses that you bring them to. And that's all it is. They're paying, they're giving you money in exchange for use of your skills. And if, There's lots of different ways that you can go about finding clients, but the easiest and the least effort way is referrals. And referrals basically come from you being really good at what you do. You can learn more skills to add them to your services, and then you can charge more, which is something that even if you do as professional development in a corporate role, You're not going to get paid anymore. I mean, sure, maybe you'll get like a rise with inflation and you're lucky if it's 3%. They're definitely not going to give you a 10% raise, which is what inflation actually was.

How to win your first client as a freelancer

Claudia: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, thank you for that. And you mentioned there around getting referrals or getting business through referrals. Obviously, that's something that you can get once you've started, but how would you recommend people to win their first client?

Hollie: Yeah, so I think there's two main ways I'd recommend is one, leaning on your existing network. So the best thing that you can do, and this feels, I don't know, some people think that it feels hard, it feels weird, but if you know that you want to be a freelancer, start telling people, you know, maybe you don't have to tell people at work, but start telling your friends, start telling your family, start telling like random people that you, me, like, go to networking events, like, just tell everyone in your current network that you know that this is what you're offering, this is what you'd love to do, find clients, like, offer to do stuff for free for people, like, if you want to go into, I don't know, Facebook ads, like, offer to set something up, like, go into a coffee shop and say, hey, I'd love to do this for you, like, just Tap on your network because usually someone you know, knows someone who needs something.

Then the other way you can do it is essentially just finding strangers. So you can do this on the internet or in person. So on the internet, I'd say Facebook groups are the best places to do this. You can find niche Facebook groups. So you can find ones that are just for female entrepreneurs, you can find Facebook groups that are for, I don't know, health and fitness or that are for, like, I don't know, CrossFit or web designers or course creators. Like, just pick whatever niche that you like, pick whatever skill set you think you want to learn, and then go find Facebook groups. There's going to be a bit of trial and error. Like, some Facebook groups will be dead, some will be great. Just get in and see what it's about. Then the other thing you can do is actually just go in person.

So, go to networking events. Like, your Chamber of Commerce probably has events. look on Eventbrite, like there's always some kind of event happening, just network, talk to people. Yeah, also, if you're, I think why I love the idea of working with clients for free and signing beta clients as your first few clients is when you're talking to strangers about your services, it's such a no brainer. So say you wanna design websites, and maybe you want to do them for, I don't know, like spas, for example.

Well, literally just go on Google, go in your local area, type into Google Maps, spas, med spas, nail salons, whatever it is, and then literally look at all of them. Find ones that have like good reviews, and they probably have a Facebook page or an Instagram page, and then you go onto their website, and it's like the shittest website you've ever seen. It's really janky to book, but they have like a vibe on Instagram, and they look cool, and they've got pictures, and the salon looks nice, but like there's this mismatch. If you go and pitch them and say, hey, this is what my career was, this is my background, even if you have no background, skip that part, just say, hey, I am learning to be a web designer, and I love your brand, I love your business, and I noticed that you show up so well on Instagram, you have such cool photos, you do the best nail art, you have such a beautiful salon, and I would actually love to help you in getting new customers, so I have a proposal for you. I would love to design your website on whatever, Squarespace, Wix, show it, pick your platform, and say, I'd love to design your website for you. All I would love in return is just a testimonial. That's it.

Why are they going to say no? Why are they going to say no? They're not going to. They're going to say, yeah, great. Because the best case scenario for them is they have this beautiful website. It's amazing. It changes their business. And worst case scenario, it's a shit website, and they hate it. And then they never use it. Well, fine. They didn't pay for it. You know what I mean? If you put yourself in that person's perspective and their shoes, they have no reason to say no. Also, there's not that many people who are that ballsy who are going to do that and just straight up cold pitch. Be nice and be excited and friendly. If you always do it in a way where you're positioning it as this is why it's going to be good for you, Like with everything to do with talking about yourself as a freelancer, it's all about the business. It's literally nothing about you. It's what can you do for the business? What problems can you solve with your skill set? And essentially that's what you do. You just charge more and more every time you do it. But at the very start you'll say I have a new skill set and you have a problem which is you don't have a website or your website is really bad so I think I can help you but in a mutually beneficial way and then it kind of just goes up and up from there so.

How to win more freelance work

Claudia: Great. Would you recommend any platforms including things like Fiverr or other platforms like that?

Hollie: Yes. Yeah so I think Fiverr and Upwork are amazing. When it comes to those platforms, I think what's really cool about them is they're actually saying, hey, here's jobs. It's just like a deed. They're saying, here's jobs, would you like to apply for them? Whereas everything else is you're kind of waiting and hoping people will find you or you're reaching out to people wondering if they have that need. Whereas I love those platforms because they're just, the only reason someone is going to go to Upwork is to hire someone.

Claudia: Well, I think also it's worth highlighting that Waddyado has a jobs board, which will enable contract freelance recruitment as well. So if people are looking for options, please do upload your profile and or have a look at the jobs on what do you do? Why not?

Hollie: Yeah. You never know what you'll find.

Steps to get into freelancing

Claudia: Awesome. So just final few questions for you. So what three actionable steps would you recommend to those looking to get into freelancing?

Hollie: So first, identify the skill set that you have. If you feel like, okay, you have no skill sets, that's fine. Identify what skill set you would like to acquire and learn. Then after you've done that, make a plan for what do you want? Why do you want to freelance? Is it that you want to make more money? Do you want more time? Do you want more flexibility? Do you want to have location freedom? What is the main driver? Because being a freelancer, it's not all plain sailing. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. So you have to have something else other than just, you know, I saw it on Instagram and it looked kind of cool and I've heard people do it. Like you have to have a real like internal motivator as to why you want to do that. And then thirdly, just get out and start.

Freelancer resources and podcast recommendations

Claudia: Fabulous advice. And what three resources or podcasts would you recommend people listening to or to read to get into the industry also?

Hollie: Yes, okay so I mean if you want to learn more about freelancing I have a podcast it's called the Her HQ podcast and I basically interview all types of freelancers and talk to them exactly all about their journey of how they actually made it so right from What were they doing before they found out about the online world? What were the steps that they took? How quickly did it happen? What pivots did they make? So come and listen to that. It's free. I also have a membership, a paid membership, which is called Club 83, which you can come and join. And that actually then takes it a step further. And we go through, okay, this is how to create your portfolio. This is, you know, there's like templates on how to actually like pitch beta clients and things like that.

And then I would recommend Skillshare and Udemy. Like YouTube and Google are amazing, but sometimes you have to know what to type in. And this is kind of goes back to the whole, you don't know what you don't know. So Skillshare and Udemy are two really cheap places where you can learn a new skillset.

Claudia: So yeah. Fabulous. Well, Holly, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. You've shared so many nuggets of wonderful wisdom and it's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you.

Hollie: Thank you for having me.

Claudia: Thank you so much for listening to the Waddyado podcast. Whether you're looking for a job or ready to find your latest inspired hire, head over to Waddyado.com or click the link in the description. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share with anyone you think would love this episode.