Bad Language » How to freelance

Are you Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg?

Matthew Stibbe — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:50:00 +0000

Steve Jobs obsessively tinkered and polished Apple’s products (and his yacht, apparently). Jonathan Ive said that Apple doesn’t do focus groups. As Jobs once remarked, before Henry Ford, if you asked people what they wanted they would have asked for a more efficient horse.

Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in a few weeks and it has sort of evolved and grown since then. Mainly in response to user feedback. It is the epitome of the ‘minimum viable product’ user-led development.

Which are you? “Don’t ship it until it’s perfect” or “Let’s ship this now and see how people use it”?

They have to want it more than me

Matthew Stibbe — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:07:19 +0000

I sometimes do free work for causes I believe in. For example, I’ve been a governor at St. Anne’s Nursery School in Kensington for nearly a decade. I think I get more out of it than they do because I find the warmth and energy of the place inspiring.

However, I was recently asked to join another board on a pro bono basis. But the chair of this committee insists on getting a CV (which I had to write specially, since I haven’t actually been an employee of anyone but myself since I was 18) and she insists on meeting me in person.

Well, okay. But she’s now blown through two appointments without showing up for either of them.

I have a pretty good rule of thumb for this kind of thing: they have to want it more than me. And it’s a good reminder for me. If I ask someone for a favour, I have to make it easy for them to do it for me and I have to be extra polite about it.

Are you spending your time doing something that matters more to you than it does to your clients?

No related posts.

Free business eBooks and guides

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:34:00 +0000

Over the past year or so, we have produced a range of white papers and guides for HP and now they’re available free on Scribd. I think they’re pretty good, useful and interesting so I wanted to share them on Bad Language too.

Free HP event for entrepreneurs and startups

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 19 May 2011 12:38:53 +0000

I run HP’s Business Answers blog and we’re holding a free event for entrepreneurs TOMORROW AFTERNOON (Friday 20 May) at the Soho Hotel in London. There are just five places left and I thought I’d share this invitation on Bad Language, in case any of my readers might be interested. Here is the invitation:

Have you set up your own business?
Are you an entrepreneur?
Do you work for small or medium sized business?

If any of the above apply to you and you would you like to find out what opportunities are out there to help you stand out from the crowd and grow your business, then HP’s first Business Answers Forum may be perfect for you!

HP, in association with Microsoft and Intel, is holding an afternoon workshop on Friday 20th May at 13:00pm – 16:00pm in Central London where industry experts will let you in on the secrets to nurturing a successful business. The following speakers will be present at the event:

Gavin Parrish and Amy Bonnici, HP – Insights into the opportunities out there for SMBs to grasp
Allister Frost, Microsoft – Advice on how to grow your business in the digital world
Katie Ledger, branding consultant – Build a strong brand image for yourself and your business, on and offline

We have five spaces left! If you would like to attend please email HPB4B@edelman.com today!

Bambi vs. Godzilla: how to work with very big clients

Matthew Stibbe — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:36:49 +0000

I originally wrote this as a guest post for MarketingProfs.com.

There is no law that says small firms can only do business with other small firms. If you can get your foot in the door, working for Fortune 500 companies is the smart way to grow a profitable marketing firm.

This article is about one small company – my own business, Articulate Marketing – and how we have found ways to turn our size into a competitive advantage. We work with giants including lovely companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Symantec and NetJets. This is what we have learned:

Big is beautiful. Big companies are good clients. They do things that help small businesses. For example, they pay on time. They understand marketing so they brief well and don’t expect the impossible. If you have ever lost sleep over a small business CEO who wants you to take away all his marketing pain but can’t say what he wants (or pay for it), then you’ll know what I mean. (See Writers are from Mars, Clients are from Venus for more on this.) There are collateral benefits too. For example, big name clients add lustre to your own marketing. Also, you can learn a lot from working with true professionals in world-class companies.
Small companies can help. All my clients work with multinational advertising, marcomms and PR agencies. These guys have scale and consistency on their side. But they can be slow moving, bureaucratic and expensive. Without trying to replace them, small companies like Articulate can provide a more responsive service in niche areas; in our case copywriting and advice. Apply your marketing skills to your own business. Polish your expertise like a diamond so that everyone can see it the way you do. Conversely, don’t try to be all things to all people. An old editor of mine said, “You can’t be a good writer on every topic under the sun. Pick one field and be the very best.”
What they see is what they get. When you’re a small company, what your clients see is what they get. If you’re the person turning up for the pitch and you’re the person doing the work, there are no communications barriers. Fred Brooks’s book The Mythical Man-Month says that you don’t get more productive by adding more people; you just increase the amount of time wasted on communications. Understanding this point is central to outcompeting bigger rivals.
This time, it’s personal. It’s easy to see multinationals as impersonal monoliths. Wrong! To misquote Soylent Green, big companies are made of people. Try to see the world from their perspective. People in big company marketing departments are generally budget-rich but time poor. They like dealing with people who make their lives easier by delivering good quality work on time without lots of handholding. As with the rest of us, they like doing business with people they like. So your first objective is to make contact with within individuals within large corporations who can become your champion.
Making contact with the mothership. There are several ways to make first contact. You can go work for a big company and then leave to set up on your own. You can work for an agency that is already rostered either as a subcontractor or as an employee. In my case, I made initial contact with some clients during my days as a freelance technology journalist and with others by word of mouth, recommendation and when people move jobs. I have also had some success with invitation-only seminars. They give me a chance to share my expertise and begin a conversation. I recommend David Maister’s book, The Trusted Advisor, which is packed with insights about this approach to selling. See also my article 27 Proven Freelance Marketing Tips.
Be part of the family. Your objective is to get rostered. Once you are on the roster of approved suppliers, the nice people in the marketing department can give you work simply by raising a purchase order. You just need to concentrate on building a good relationship with them – see 11 Things to do at the Start of a New (Business) Relationship. Avoid the trap of subcontracting for a larger agency that is already rostered. It might seem like a simple solution to a big company employee but it won’t do you any good. Agency subcontractors are the battered wives of the marketing industry. Every time we have been in this position, the agency has taken all the credit, marked up our prices and made our life hell. We still have the bruises and scars.
Getting past the purchasing department. In your quest to get rostered, your enemy is the purchasing department. They hate small companies. In their dreams, they only have to deal with one supplier and they get a 99% discount. In my experience, you need a powerful patron to strengthen your negotiating position with them. The more unique or specialist or niche your services, the harder it is for a purchasing department to haggle about prices or play you off against other providers. If you have to give a discount, try to do on a pre-defined portion of your business, such as the first 10,000 words or the first campaign. Don’t give away your profit margin in perpetuity. Try to avoid giving a daily or hourly rate as this is easily negotiated away. We charge a fixed rate per word so that we can shift a negotiation onto the scope of the work rather than the price. For example, if a client wants a 10% discount, we suggest a 10% reduction in the length of the copy. If you can, make them sacrifice something they care about to get a discount. This is the hardest part of the relationship but it is also the time when your stock is highest with your new client. Know that you have leverage and that you can negotiate. You have my permission to say ‘no’ to a bad deal.
The downsides. Sometimes, big companies will behave like, well, big companies. The left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing. Office politics sometimes gets in the way. Some projects will take months when you could do it yourself in a few days if you didn’t have to build a consensus first. Head office will kill projects at random. People will move jobs. They might get bored of you. You might get de-rostered arbitrarily. All these things have happened to us and we survived. You will too. (Check out Six Steps to a Stress-Free Career for instant counselling.) Remember that your loyalty is to the people you work with and that your job is to help them do their job without making life more difficult than it already is. Deal well with adversity and you’ll get more work. Nobody likes a cry-baby.

In conclusion, we live in the Jurassic Age of big business but I’d rather be a rodent than a dinosaur.

13 lessons in persuasion: conmen vs. marketing pros

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:42:34 +0000

3.2 million people in the UK fall for mass marketed scams ever year – around one person in every fifteen. Swindles cost the public £3.5 billion every year.

The OFT conducted a report to investigate those who had been conned and concluded that:

20 per cent of the UK population could be particularly vulnerable to scams, with previous victims of a scam consistently more likely to show interest in responding again
Over-confidence may actually increase the risk of becoming a victim. Having good background knowledge of the subject of a scam offer does not always keep you safe.
Victims are not poor-decision makers, for example they may have successful business or professional careers, but tend to be unduly open to persuasion by others and less able to control their emotions.
Victims often keep their decision to respond to a scam offer private and avoid speaking about it with family or friends.

The seven pitfalls

Frank Stajano, an associate professor with the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, and Paul Wilson, star of "The Real Hustle", list seven principles that hustlers use to con their victims:

The Distraction principle – While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you and you won’t notice.
The Social Compliance principle – Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this “suspension of suspiciousness” to make you do what they want.
The Herd principle – Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks.
The Dishonesty principle – Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you’ve been had.
The Deception principle – Things and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.
The Need and Greed principle – Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.
The Time principle – When you are under time pressure to make an important choice, you use a different decision strategy. Hustlers steer you towards a strategy involving less reasoning.

Why do people say yes?

Conning and persuading are two very different things. However, having an understanding how to influence someone can help marketers use the art of persuasion for good.

Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University defines six "weapons of influence":

Reciprocity – People tend to return a favour. Give something away for free.
Commitment and Consistency – If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honour that commitment. React fast. It’s vital to react quickly to requests.
Social Proof – People will do things that they see other people are doing. Typical examples on the web include personal recommendations and endorsements.
Authority – People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Find a flagship client.
Liking – People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. Make friends with your clients
Scarcity – Perceived scarcity will generate demand. Saying offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales.

Do you need a think week?

Laura Connell — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:51:00 +0000

The economic downturn brought about a boom in mid-career gap years. The so called “sabbat-packers” took unpaid leave and did something adventurous thousands of miles away from their recession-struck offices.

The idea behind “sabbat-packing” was improve your quality of life by getting away from your job.

But does it work the other way round? Can you improve the quality of your job by getting away from your life?

Well, it worked for Bill Gates…

Think Week

Before Bill Gates stepped down from his day-to day duties at Microsoft, he famously went on biannual “Think Weeks”.

During these weeks he isolated himself from all distractions to focus on strategy.

However, Think Week was not a week of solitary musing- more of pro-active pondering.

For Bill Gates, Think Week looked something like this:

Banned:

Family
Friends
Microsoft employees

Essential:

Hundreds of papers on the future of technology written by your employees
An assistant to cut the submitted papers down to about 100 prior to Think Week
A computerised response system to help you respond to papers
Secret island getaway
Helicopter to take you to secret-island getaway
Butler to make you lunch and dinner
Diet Orange Crush to fuel your 18-hour thinkathons

The idea of a Think Week is very appealing to me – certainly a good excuse to read all of the non-degree related books I have been saving for after graduation. I’m not sure about Diet Orange Crush though, I think I’ll stick to coffee.

Try it yourself

If you were going to design a Think Week for yourself…

What would you want to get out of it?
What would you read?
What would you ban?
What would be your brain-food of choice?

11 things to do at the start of a new (business) relationship

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:30:49 +0000

The last week has seen the beginning of a coalition government in the UK. For me personally, it has seen the start of two new client relationships and the renewal of an older one. It seems like a good time to think about what makes relationships work and how to ensure that each marriage is all honeymoon.

Be friends first. Try to find common ground with your partner. As a freelance journalist and now in marketing, I find that the best business relationships I have are with people I like. The ones that went off the rails always involved someone I didn’t like. It helps to be friendly, enthusiastic and to start with the assumption that everyone is going to get along.
Get into bed with the right person. As John Coulthard says in his article How to close a billion dollar deal, it’s essential to ‘think individuals not organisations’ and ‘negotiate with the right person’. In my experience, the most important thing you can do is to find the right champion for your work at your client. This is the person who understands
Set expectations. Aparna Singh said “I think establishing expectations clearly is very important. This is one reason why companies/individuals that do business together often end up feeling let down/cheated at a later stage.” I agree. I wrote earlier that writers are from Mars and clients are from Venus, so agreeing what is in scope is very important. I use a detailed project brief. John McGarvey prefers a more formal contract.
It’s all about them (even when it’s about you). One of my clients defined marketing as “talking about clients on your terms, not talking about yourself on their terms.”
Overcommunicate. It’s a cliché that men don’t call the day after a first date and that women want them to. But in business relationships, it is essential to build trust by communicating early and often. Trust is certainty based on past experience. Doing what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it is essential at the beginning of a relationship. If you get the proposal in on time, your client will be more confident that you’ll get the whole project in on time. If you return calls quickly at the beginning, it’s more likely you’ll return calls later when there’s a problem.
Don’t overpromise. Another way to corrode trust is to overpromise and under-deliver. Make sure you know what you can realistically achieve and plan your schedule and deliverables accordingly. See my previous article: How to budget for, plan and measure writing output.
Shake hands. My wife, Aileen Gonsalves, is an actress and director. Her golden rule is to go in and shake hands with everyone in the case on the first day of rehearsals. Last night, we went for dinner at Lola and Simon in Hammersmith and the owner shook hands with us as we went in. It makes a big impression. On a small scale, it’s the kind of compelling event that politicians like – think about the press conference in the garden at No. 10, for example.
Be a trusted advisor. David Maister’s book The Trusted Advisor is one of the few business books that I really respect. Read it. It explains how to build a business relationship on trust.
Be specific about money. In business, there is always money in the relationship. But as with personal relationships (or political ones), it is more likely to be destructive than constructive. This is why it needs special handling. For example, I always try to speak to people personally about money issues rather than sending an email.
Relationships are projects too. Despite what you see on Mad Men, account management is not about three martini lunches. It’s about project management. Schedule calls, identify criticalities, reconcile differences, use formal change control, set service level agreements, pay attention. Good relationship management is not rocket science but it’s not an accident either.
Understand the ending. I think it’s very healthy to understand one another’s red lines. It’s also good to define the way a relationship will end when everyone is positive and cooperative. A business pre-nup, if you like. This could be the successful completion of the project with a debrief and dinner. Or it could be an agreement about how the project will be closed out and wrapped up if one party walks away. My policy, which may be controversial, is that you should make it as easy as possible for your clients to fire you. It’s a commitment to them that you will stand or fall by how good your work is and how much effort you put into the relationship, not how good your lawyer is.

To do or to be, that is the real question

Matthew Stibbe — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:09:30 +0000

Like most writers and entrepreneurs, I have a bulging to-do list. It’s like a bottomless cup of coffee; it stimulates, comforts and raises blood pressure all at once.

My to-do list runs my life. I manage it on Outlook and via my iPhone with TaskTask. It is the epitome of the “do something” approach to life.

I remember reading Getting Things Done and thinking ‘this is all obvious’ because I was already doing most of the things. (I am quite envious of David Allen’s ability to erect a few simple, useful ideas into a book, a system and a thriving business.)

Today, I read Leo Babauta’s post Kill your to-do list. He advocates a one thing a day system. “I wake up in the morning, and decide what One Thing I’m excited about. Then I focus on doing that, pushing everything else aside, clearing distractions, and allowing myself to get caught up in the moment.”

It’s a nice idea. A bit of a dream, really. It is the complete opposite of my way of working. It’s about being rather than doing and it has an attractive Zen in-the-moment flavour to it.

But it’s also impractical. My clients wouldn’t thank me if I missed my deadlines because I decided to do somebody else’s work first. To-do lists help me prioritise, schedule and filter. It’s good to concentrate on one thing at a time but it’s also essential to pick the right thing.

But it did make me ask if my to-do list was too much at the mercy of other people. Things other people want me to do rather than things I want to do. Things I am excited about. It’s got me thinking and I’d really like to get some feedback from other people?

So, dear reader, how do you manage your life? Is it to do or to be? How do you balance your passions with your duties? What tools do you use? Do you have a ‘system’, like GTD? Is it useful? Please leave a comment here or on Twitter.

Question everything

Why do deadlines work?

Matthew Stibbe — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:25:42 +0000

I’m reading Max Hastings Finest Yearsand there’s a lovely quote in there: “An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.” It’s the same for writers. But I wonder why?

This is a slightly different problem from the one I discussed in November which involves doing stuff at the last minute because a client didn’t ask you soon enough (We need this yesterday – how do you react?).

Robert Cialdini (author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion ) talks about the power of commitment and consistency; a writer promises to meet a deadline and failure to do so is a breach of faith. I suspect also that guilt is a strong motivator than greed.

What do you think?