Designing and diversifying - Web Designer Karmen Kendrick
About this episode…
Designing and diversifying - Web Designer Karmen Kendrick
Karmen was selling hair extensions online when she first got into web design. After designing a site for her own business, she began building on her skills and eventually developed a portfolio of demo sites to show what she was capable of.
With part-time work in insurance to back her up, Karmen launched a web design business. She chats to Steve about finding clients through content marketing and social media, getting confident with pricing, and developing digital products to diversify her income.
Read highlights from the episode in the next tab.
Getting started without savings
Karmen started without any savings but she did have a back-up plan. She worked in insurance before starting her business and she was able to contract part-time for agencies in that industry.
“That safety net there helped me out a lot. And I feel like some people, they feel that if they're not doing their thing a hundred percent full time, it doesn't feel real. I had to get over that myself because I have multiple strings of income. I'm not just depending on my design business to pay my bills. I have a few other things. So I want to tell anybody that's listening, don't feel bad about having side hustles outside of your business as well, because I mean, you need that.”
Learning online
Karmen taught herself web design by learning and researching online. She credits Chris Do’s YouTube channel and learning platform, The Futur, which helped her to find her way with things like pricing and processes.
“I felt that's when the shift really happened to me, because you can say you're going to charge more but if you don't believe it, the people that you want to attract, they're not going to believe it either. So it was really a mindset shift, listening to The Futur and just trying to implement a lot of the things that they were telling us to do.”
Investing in your brand
Karmen says she noticed a real difference in how clients perceived her — and how likely they were to hire her — after she invested in a professional photoshoot.
"It's just pictures, but I feel that when people look at your work and look at what you do, especially the prices that you charge, they want to see that you're actually invested in your brand. And if you're just using the same stock images that everyone else has used, the same templates, it's like you're not really standing out. You're not showing like, "Hey, I'm a hundred percent invested in this."
“It takes time.
Just go at your own pace because everything works out in the end.”
— Karmen Kendrick
More from Karmen Kendrick
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Web Designer Karmen Kendrick
Steve Folland: As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah. So my story actually takes a lot of unexpected turns and U turns. So I originally started out as I guess an entrepreneur online or online business owner back in 2012. I started this online hair extensions company, and I hired this web design company to design this beautiful website on Wix. It looked really nice. The problem was that it did not have a good backhand system for order management. So I couldn't send out emails saying like, "Hey, your order has shipped with your tracking number," and all that good stuff. And so I'm just like, "That's not enough. That's too much manual work." Because of course I'm expecting to get a lot of orders in. So I decided to move over to Shopify. Shopify was not as intuitive as Wix. You did need to know a little bit of code or buy one of the templates or hire one of the Shopify developers to do something custom for you.
Karmen Kendrick: And so I kind of just settled with Shopify for a while. I didn't have enough money to invest in another designer. So I kind of just did what I could with it. It was very ugly. I will say that. And then I ended up finding WordPress, which I currently use. And it was the first time that I was able to DIY the site and it looks presentable and my customers actually trust, okay, I'm buying from a legitimate source. And then from there I just kind of got the idea like, "Hey, you know what? I'm getting kind of good at this thing. Maybe I can design websites for other people." And that's kind of just how it all kind of kicked off.
Steve Folland: So the entrepreneur in you has this business, but you've created your own website to get it the way you want. What happened then though? Was it like you then thought no more about the web developing side of it and just carried on with the business or did something happen?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, so I just thought that, well, my thing was when I was doing the hair company, I was like, I wanted to help other entrepreneurs that wanted to get started with hair companies, but they also needed websites. And so I kind of wanted to be like the whole solution, like offer the product, offer the website. And that's kind of how it got started with me designing the website. I was going to like pretty much just make a copy of my own site and just pretty much customize it for them. And then some kind of way, I was like, "Well, maybe I can just actually this design websites for other people." I met this guy at this bar one night, or I think it was like in the afternoon or something on a Sunday. And we were just talking and he was saying that he needed a website. And so I showed him my site and he was like, "Can you make my site?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure." So $300 later, and the website, I spit it up for him.
Steve Folland: And so did you have any design experience? What had you done before this or were you teaching yourself as you went?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, I was just teaching myself. I had no, and it's funny that you say that because I had no design experience whatsoever, so I was just winging it.
Steve Folland: So how quickly did that pick up, the designing websites for other people?
Karmen Kendrick: The first year, that was like 2016, I probably maybe had like two or three clients. But then I started to realize that it wasn't just web design, it's also like project management. And at that time I probably didn't even know what project management was, but now I understand it. It was just something about the process. And then I had this one customer where I designed the website and then like a few months later, they wanted more things done to it. I had no contract or anything else. I'm just like, "Okay, there has to be a better way." And so I felt like the next year, I spent a lot of time just kind of trying to figure out, "Okay, how do I create a process? How do I become a better designer?" And just learning different things like that. So 2017, I literally had no clients whatsoever because I was like, "I got to get this right. I want to do what I want to do and do it right this time."
Steve Folland: Wow. So you decided in 2017 to step back and teach yourself more. So was your hair business paying its way? If you see what I mean?
Karmen Kendrick: No, I had a lot of ups and downs with it. So in the middle of all of this, I ended up moving. Because I'm not from Atlanta. I'm from a smaller town maybe three hours away from here. And so I moved and relocating, I was like very young, like 21. I came here with no job and I'm trying to figure it out. And of course I have a product based business. So it's very resource and money draining at that point. So the hair business up and down. I was still working my full-time job nine to five. And so that same year, 2016, I got like a ticket to go to Hong Kong to go to this beauty expo where I could source more products. And I bought that ticket back in July of that year. And by the time I got to Hong Kong in November, I was like, "I don't even want to do this anymore." I'm just going to take it as a vacation trip because I was all about web design at that point. So I was like, "You know, it's fine. I've been doing this like for like the last four or five years, I'm ready to put it down anyway and just go onto the next thing."
Steve Folland: How did you then reboot the web development? How did it feel different after that year of learning?
Karmen Kendrick: I started to notice what other people were doing, especially because I'm more in like the service-based business, personal brand space. And so a lot of those web designers like myself, they had very beautiful, their own photography that they use. They have like very modern, very personalized websites. And so I kind of just started to go by that flow. And of course I got on Pinterest. I don't know what drew me to Pinterest, but I'm glad I did because I started seeing a lot of different things. I started blogging more and more people began to find me that way on Pinterest. So that's when it kind of just all started turning around.
Steve Folland: So you were blogging via Pinterest.
Karmen Kendrick: On WordPress I noticed what people were doing on Pinterest, that they were sharing their blog posts on Pinterest, just using different pins. And so they were talking about different things they do in their business, like their process or their design or just different how to's of how do I write a blog post in WordPress? How do I set up a WordPress site? Because I think every blogger gets to the point where they start to teach blogging to other people and so I was kind of taking that same route as a web designer.
Steve Folland: And much as these days I might see on Instagram lots of people posting stuff, teaching and linking to their blogs, that's what it was like for you for Pinterest.
Karmen Kendrick: Right, right. And the good thing about Pinterest unlike Instagram is that it goes directly back to your website. You have to go to only one link to by you don't have the swipe up feature on Instagram. It was perfect
Steve Folland: So did people come to your blog? You were helping them, but then did they hire you?
Karmen Kendrick: No. So 2017 and like another year 2018, just really just putting myself out there, but still getting no clients. But the good thing at the time was I still had a day job. And so it was still kind of, I was able to pay my bills, but I was still not getting any clients. I'm like, "What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong?" But it's just like, I guess I just wasn't appealing to the type of audience that I wanted to work with. And so I took some time to kind of make my own demo sites. I was planning to use them as actual templates, but it didn't work out that way. I made maybe six demo sites and they were very gorgeous, very nicely designed. And so it kind of just show people what I was capable of.
Karmen Kendrick: And then once those started circulating, especially on Pinterest, I just got to keep bringing up Pinterest because it helped me out so much in the beginning, that's when I really started seeing people come to my website, inquiring to work with me. But I mean, it's still just took some more, I guess mindset shifts for me to get into a place where I could freelance full-time. Because I think when we started freelancing, we start off very, very cheap and $300 websites, you have to build a lot of those in order to pay your bills. And so you have to figure out, "Okay, what do I need to charge more and that my customer actually finds it as valuable to pay more for this?"
Steve Folland: There's so much I want to ask. To start, did you feel like giving up in that time when you were, you felt like you were doing the right thing with the blogging, but nothing was working out for you, client wise?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, I definitely felt like giving up, but it was just like, I had no alternative. I just remember one night I was, because my day job was in insurance at the time. I worked for an insurance agency. And I was just so frustrated one night, because I'm like, "I really want this to work." But at that point I really did hate my job. And so I just went to bed and I was just thinking to myself, "If you quit this, what else are you going to do?" Because I mean really I was in a dead end career. It's like, nowhere else I can go. So I was like, "I have to make this work." And so that's what kind of kept me going, even though sometimes I wanted to give up on it.
Steve Folland: And it was when you started creating portfolio pieces, I guess, and sharing those on Pinterest, that's what had the effect. It wasn't the helpful content. It was the showing what you could do and people seeing that.
Karmen Kendrick: Yes. And I also would like to say, I think a big piece, because even though I talked about brand photography earlier, because of the type of clients I was wanting to work with, brand photography was a big piece to it. I still had not taken like my own branded photo shoot pictures. And it's crazy to say this, but I felt like when I did that, I'd invested to take those brand pictures so that way I wasn't just posting a lot of stock images, it was me seeing me in my element. I felt like I started attracting more clients that way as well. I think one of my first real clients was my photographer at that point.
Steve Folland: You took the investment to get proper professional photographs of you in your work setting and stuff like that. And that made a real difference, putting your face to it.
Karmen Kendrick: Yes, and it just seems like, I think about it now and I tell people that it just seems so crazy. It's just pictures, but I feel that when people look at your work and look at what you do, especially the prices that you charge, they want to see that you're actually invested in your brand as well. And if you're just kind of just using the same stock images that everyone else has used, the same templates, it's like you're not really standing out. You're not showing like, "Hey, I'm a hundred percent invested in this." And now, you can tell, she really spends money on her brand.
Steve Folland: So there's also a point in there where you said you've got to make a lot of $300 websites to pay your way each month. So how did you get around that dynamo? How did you get to the price point that you wanted to get to?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah. So I was very into self help education, YouTube, all that good stuff. And so I found out about The Futur. I don't know if you heard of them on YouTube.
Steve Folland: Oh, yeah.
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, so I think every creative by this point, if you don't know about The Futur, you are under a rock. But I found their channel and it was perfect for me. I think that was like in 2018 as well. And it was just life changing just hearing them talk about how to price your work as a freelancer, how to get clients. And I felt that's when the shift really just happened to me because you can say you're going to charge more for a website, but if you don't believe it or whatever it is that you do, you don't think you can charge more. But if you don't believe it, the people that you want to attract, they're not going to believe in it either. So it was really a mindset shift listening to the channel and just trying to implement a lot of the things that they were telling us to do.
Steve Folland: What would you say that it was that had that big shift that got you into that mindset then? What did you implement?
Karmen Kendrick: I would say, just hearing about, of course I wasn't ready to start doing value based pricing, but just hearing about value based pricing and just seeing that it was available. Because I never thought about it that way. Like if a client is going to make, just an example, if they're going to make a million dollars off of some work that you helped them create, then you deserve to make a nice portion of that as well. But even if you're not at that point to do value based pricing, you still understand that what I'm doing actually produces revenue and it produces value for them. And so why not? Why would I not get paid to help them do that? That was the biggest shift for me.
Steve Folland: Nice. So you started posting your new made up portfolio pieces and you started sharing your face on your site and on Pinterest as well. And so gradually people started coming to you and work picked up, right?
Karmen Kendrick: Right. Yes it did. It wasn't until last, sorry, I'm still thinking that 2020 is still going on.
Steve Folland: Feels like it is.
Karmen Kendrick: Right, so in 2019 is when I was able to leave the full-time job and go full-time freelance. So that's when it really just started to pick up for me at that point.
Steve Folland: Awesome. How did you know you were ready?
Karmen Kendrick: You know what, I really wasn't. I didn't have six months of savings. And I don't like encourage anybody to do what I did or anything like that because I don't have any, I guess, other people responsibilities, but I still have my rent, my car payment, other things like that. And my thing was that I've always kind of been very independent. My parents, they weren't always able to help me as far as financially. So everything was always back on me at the end of the day. And so it was a very scary move. The only thing that made me feel comfortable was that I was able to, so my job in insurance, I was able to kind of be a contractor in a sense to other agencies that maybe needed help part-time. So I was kind of like a temp service all by myself. And so I was like, "Okay, if times get tough, I can do this." And then I had a few clients I had a little bit, maybe like one or two months that I could use as far as income, and I kind of just worked with that.
Steve Folland: And did taking that leap, albeit with a slight safety net beneath you, did that help you then drive it forward, having that extra time, I guess?
Karmen Kendrick: Yes, it did. It helped out a lot, me having that more time. But at the same time, I was still doing some of the contract work in insurance. And so it was kind of starting to feel like my job, but I did have the flexibility in saying like, "No, I don't want to take this work." And I can work when I want to. But that safety net there helped me out a lot. And I feel like some people, they feel if they're not doing their thing a hundred percent full time, it doesn't feel real. And it's just like, you know what? I had to get over that myself because I'm like, I have multiple strings of income. I'm not just depending on my design business to pay my bills. I have this. I have a few other things. These are products. Like everything is diversified. So I also want to tell anybody that's listening, don't feel about having side hustles outside of your business as well, because I mean, you need that.
Steve Folland: So you've got side hustles outside of your web design business.
Karmen Kendrick: Yes.
Steve Folland: What have you got going on?
Karmen Kendrick: I still work in the insurance world. So a guy I used to work with, we were co-workers at one point, he ended up getting his own insurance agency. And so a couple of hours a week out log in and help him out with a few things, and so that works out. It's not really time-consuming. It's only a few hours a week here and there. And so that kind of helps me out and it's just the thing that I know that if all else fails, I have the type of background where I can always get a job if I needed to.
Steve Folland: Do you still have the hair extensions on the go?
Karmen Kendrick: No, no, I don't have the hair extensions anymore. I would say my other side house was my digital products, which is more so in line with my business, but that's like my other income. And I would like to get that where it's mainly I guess more passive income coming in, but it takes time to get to that point. So the insurance and digital products, those are my two saving graces when I'm not getting a lot of design clients.
Steve Folland: So when did you introduce the digital products and how did you go about that? What are they?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, so I've tried so hard with digital products, just thinking, well when I first started, it was like, "Maybe this isn't good enough." Or you don't see anybody buying anything. So at first I think it was like maybe a couple of different layout pages, like maybe an about page and a home page layout. So now I only have like six that are actually in my shop. But inside of my archive, I have so many more I could put out there. It just takes time to put everything together. But right now I have a services and pricing guide, which has been very helpful and it's also been one of my best sellers. I also have like a web design planner. So if you're planning to do a new website, all the things you need to be thinking about before you actually build a website. That one has been very profitable. I have a link and bio layout because we all know link tree is very popular, but you can make the same exact thing on your own website and not have to pay the extra money for. So I have a template for that and a few others, I can't think of that come to mind. But yeah, so I kicked that off I would say maybe in 2019 at some point is when I started getting serious. Like, "Hey, I need to get some digital products out here."
Steve Folland: Cool. And so some of those are like WordPress templates.
Karmen Kendrick: Yes.
Steve Folland: Although one of them you just mentioned, I think the services one, that's a camper template, isn't it because I've seen that.
Karmen Kendrick: Yes. Yes. And that's been one of the best ideas I had because I was making a services and pricing guide for myself. And I was like, "Hey, I'm sure other people need the same kind of thing." And so I was like, I made it for myself and then I made it available for other people to buy.
Steve Folland: Nice. Yeah. It's really nice. And there's a lot in there. We have links, of course, at beingfreelance.com if you want to check these out. But you said that you had that guide yourself. When did you introduce using a, so to describe it, it's like, well, no, I'll let you describe it. How would you describe your services guide? When did you introduce that?
Karmen Kendrick: It's like if your website is very detailed and you talk about your process, if you show your pricing and you show your portfolio, it's pretty much all of that inside of a .pdf. And one thing I like about it is that it can kind of be a lead magnet in a sense. Maybe you don't show your prices on your website or maybe you want to give people something they can take away and maybe just think about a little bit more in the future with actually being on your site. I like it in that aspect. And it kind of just makes you stand out because it's just like, "Wow, they actually put the extra time and effort to make this whole nicely designed guide that I can look over."
Steve Folland: And did you notice that then had an impact? For you, that is, not when people buy it, for you.
Karmen Kendrick: I can't say that I've like, no one has personally said to me, "Oh my God, this is so great." I can just see the difference, especially when people reach out to you over social media. It's cool. I think I had someone else tell me that it's like, it's cool to send them the link to your website, but it kind of feels impersonal. But when you have that guide, it's on my Google drive, I use a little short link, so I can remember like, "Hey, this is the link you go to actually get to the guide itself." It just kind of makes it a little bit more personalized, especially when you talk to people over DM.
Steve Folland: Nice. How else have you changed the way that you, I guess, use your website and portray yourself over the last couple of years?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, so I'm very, very big on lead generation. That is the biggest thing for any business. And so I've been spending a lot more time, or I would say I've always been in the last couple of years, always spent time thinking about what kinds of things I can create that would generate the leads that I want. I think when I first started with lead magnets, I was thinking pretty much anything. So I think one of my first lead magnets was like a calendar and it did really great, to be honest. But if you think about it, web design and a digital calendar that you could maybe save as a wallpaper or a screensaver, that's not really in line. So yes, you will get a lot of people signing up for your email list, but they aren't actually good leads. So really thinking about what kind of lead magnet you can create, put on your site and promote it, that's the biggest thing, so that way you can get good leads coming through the door.
Steve Folland: How do you know when you've got a good lead? What do you do once somebody's downloaded that thing and you've got their email address?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah, so the next thing is having a nice email funnel set up for them. And I know that funnel just sounds like such a complicated word, but really it's just talking to people and just leading up to like, "Hey, let's go to the next step." So my lead magnet now is a website ROI calculator. We can talk about that if you want. But I know the next step for them is, well my next step is I want them to get on a discovery call. I do not do free discovery calls. I actually charge for them. And so a lot of people are used to having the free consult. And so sometimes I have to really just talk that up. So I use my email sequence, which is my funnel to just talk about different things, some frequently asked questions, some pain points may have people may have had before actually making that leap.
Karmen Kendrick: And it's not really expensive. It's 160 US dollars. I don't know what that translates to in the UK, but it's not really expensive. And then I'll allow them to apply it to their project. I just want to make sure that people are serious when we get on the phone, because that's one of the things I found out that people will waste your time. So I was like, "I need to find a way to cut that out." And so usually the people that will invest in a discovery call, they are serious leads that are ready to take the next step sooner than later.
Steve Folland: I like that. So they've got value out of the ROI calculator or whichever lead magnet that they might've signed up via. And then you serve them a sequence of emails where you're helping them further and helping filter what they might need. And then you try and sell the call by which point you're like, "Look, clearly I know what I'm talking about."
Karmen Kendrick: Exactly.
Steve Folland: "Are you serious or not?"
Karmen Kendrick: Right. You have nothing to fear at this point. So it's like taking all the fear and objections away from them because no one wants to part with their money. Especially because, I'm not a, people know me online, but I'm not a huge brand, like a Target or anything like that. So it's just like, I understand that people have a little bit of trepidation before they make the investment, even though it's a small investment at first. But I just want to make everything, to just put it out there so they can see like, "Okay, she's legit. I'm less likely to get scammed if I talk to her."
Steve Folland: So yeah. Tell me about the ROI calculator. Did you create that yourself or is that a plugin you've bought? What's that?
Karmen Kendrick: So it's a little bit of both. So I had to still create the calculator itself, but I did find this software, it's called Convertcalculator.com. It's where I actually built the calculator at. But I noticed a lot of the bigger agencies, I would go on their sites, because I'm always researching. And I noticed that they all had some kind of ROI calculator or especially the ad agencies that sell digital marketing services and they want to show their clients, "If you invest in this, this is the kind of results that you can possibly see in the future." And so I'm like that's so valuable because people, they just don't get why websites are so expensive. Especially small business owners or solopreneurs. They don't understand why it costs so much to build a website or they don't really see the value in it. And so by them actually plugging in their numbers and seeing like, "Hey, you know what? This makes sense for me." Because of course it goes by your annual revenue. So for example, I had someone, I think their annual revenue was going to be $4,800 and their website budget was $810. That makes a hundred percent sense because then 5,000 roughly, it's not a lot of money and you don't want to spend 5,000 to make a website if you're only going to make 5,000.
Steve Folland: So is most of it, I mean you talked about diversifying your revenue, but alongside the digital products, are you mainly designing websites? Is that your main service or do you have other services?
Karmen Kendrick: It's my main service, but I'm trying to not make it my main service and find other things like those, of course the digital products. I don't really know about courses and coaching right now because I don't feel comfortable with it. I really like Chris Do's approach to it. And I don't know if this is by design or if he just said, "Hey, I'm not going to do this until I get to this point." But I love the fact that he ran a creative agency for a very long time and now he's teaching design because, and no shame to anyone that does this, but I think right now we have a lot of people that have maybe a good year or two in, and now they're ready to start coaching, which is fine. You have some strategies, but I really enjoyed the aspect like, "Dang, you've run an agency for 10 years. You've really seen it all." So that's the point that I want to come from if I start coaching at some point in the future.
Steve Folland: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's Chris Die from The Futur. Because I got the sense from your website about the fact that as well as designing, you are supporting. You've noticed that sometimes people have a WordPress site and maybe you haven't designed it, but they still struggle with it?
Karmen Kendrick: Yes. I don't know how I forgot that out of the mix of support service. So that's pretty recent as well. Just being on WordPress for so long, a lot of the issues that people have are just things that I've run into in the last five years. And they are always repeating, always happening. And I noticed that a lot of people, they don't, if the designer offers them a support plan, a lot of people may see it as an additional cost and they won't take it. But then they still have problems down the line and then that's where I swoop in. And a good thing with it, it's also a good lead generation tool because if you fix their website, then you're likely to redesign or rebuild it at some point in the future if you did a good job on the support side.
Steve Folland: That is so true. Which brings us circling around to when you originally started creating helpful content for people. So you're still helping people now. How do you find the balance between free support and getting paid?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah. So that's a whole thing and that's just something I learned recently from another friend online. And she says that you don't want to give out so much free and helpful content that people feel like they can do it all by themselves. And so your content really should focus on the myths, misconceptions and mistakes of whatever it is that you do and you should speak more on that. And maybe every now and then you can have something that's like a tutorial that goes from step A to step Z, but you really want to focus on things that people can just kind of more thought leadership type of information versus more tutorial with how-to information.
Steve Folland: So you mentioned that friend, do you have like a number of people doing similar things to you?
Karmen Kendrick: Yes. Twitter is like my home online, outside of my website. I have a lot of like-minded people that follow me on Twitter and it's really my largest platform. I think I have like 8,000 followers and I just got back on Twitter in 2019. I had a Twitter when it first came out, maybe around 2010, 2011. But of course I was just junk posting whatever's going on in my life. But now I really use just Twitter to just talk about my experiences. And then people, I guess, are going through the same thing. They're like, "You're so relatable." So it kind of just works out.
Steve Folland: Those connections that you've made help you not necessarily get clients, but just to get by as a freelancer.
Karmen Kendrick: Oh yeah and clients. I would say that Twitter is better than Instagram. I even have a friend, she got on Twitter recently and she got offered this amazing job just from Twitter. And she had been on Instagram forever. I'm not saying that you can't get good opportunities on Instagram, but Twitter I feel like sometimes just things happening are a little bit faster. The ROI just returns a little bit quicker on Twitter a lot of times.
Steve Folland: So what kind of thing are you doing on Twitter?
Karmen Kendrick: So I'm just sharing. I'm just being myself, honestly. If I find something that's pretty good, I share it. I put it out there. If I'm reading an article and I have my thoughts on it. Anything business related, especially books. I read a lot of, or I should say I listen to a lot of audio books and I put things out there and people, they just kind of gravitate towards them. So it's like, "Okay, Karmen, she knows what she's talking about. She does a lot of studying." And so people, they're just drawn to that. And of course, because I coined myself as the WordPress expert, every time somebody has a WordPress question, my DMS are just full of people like, "WordPress, WordPress, WordPress. Can you help me with this?" And so that's helped me out a lot as well, just niching down. And it's like, "Hey, I am the WordPress person."
Steve Folland: And how have you found, obviously there's like a whole pandemic side to this, but other than that, where do you work from? Are you based at home?
Karmen Kendrick: Yes, I am at home and I'm doing everything I can not to go crazy.
Steve Folland: But you've always worked from home, pandemic to one side.
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah. But at least pre pandemic, you could go to Starbucks and work. And so now it's just, because I feel like you need that balance of getting out of the house and maybe working in another environment, another atmosphere and so that's a tough piece to it. Even though I've been doing, because I think everybody's kind of gotten into this home improvement type of stage since we've been quarantining. And so I've been redoing my office and everything looks all nice and I'm just like, "You know what? I still want to get out." So, but yes, I am primarily at home.
Steve Folland: And how do you find balancing work and life, particularly when you're based at home?
Karmen Kendrick: So I don't really have a lot of distractions. I just have a dog, really. So that's not really a thing. I feel like you just have to kind of have some type of schedule or some type of task management system that you use. And so I kind of use a combination of Asana for my daily tasks and then also using my Google calendar and really blocking my day off. I have a lunch period where I block my day off. Or if it's like relationship building or I only talk to clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 12:30 and 4:30, just really being very intentional about how you spend your time and how you're going to plan your time in the future.
Steve Folland: If you had to tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Karmen Kendrick: So many things. I would just tell myself that it's okay. It takes time. Don't use the internet as your, I don't want, maybe your competence. I think maybe it's another word I want to use, but don't try to use it as what you think you should be doing. Just go on your own pace because everything just works out in the end. So that's what I would tell my younger self.
Steve Folland: One thing I meant to ask was, so if we look at your business now, where are most of your clients coming from?
Karmen Kendrick: So most of my clients are coming from social media. I'm working to change that. I would like for most of my clients to come through search engines because I just feel like that's just more of a long-term game. Because social media requires for you to be social and for you to be on there. And it's just like, I'm not that kind of person that always wants to be on social media. And right now it's like a chore. And so I'm really trying to change and just search engines, getting my SEO game up, learning more things about SEO.
Steve Folland: Ah, what would you be looking for as in, when you were planting the seeds of SEO?
Karmen Kendrick: Yeah. So I'm looking for the people that are just asking questions about certain things. Like do they make sense? Like for example, I published this on Medium recently and it was how much should I invest in a website? And so that's a very common question of how much should a website cost or however you want to spin that around. So that's actually a post because I post to my blog and I post to Medium as well. And so I seen a lot of traffic come through Medium and of course on my blog when I wrote the type of articles. So just things that people are actually asking about on the internet. Because a lot of times, or I should say Google, because people that are searching on Google, they have more buying intent a lot of times then social media. Because you think about social media, we go on there to be entertained and maybe just so happen you see something that you may want to buy or maybe a service. But Google, your intent is to solve a problem and possibly even buy something that helps you solve that problem.
Steve Folland: There was a point in the story where we were talking about the number of $300 websites that you need to turn over in a month. And now, you're making a hundred K in a year, for example. What would be the biggest thing that you put in place to get to where you want to be financially in that respect?
Karmen Kendrick: So many things. I just feel like of course adopting a mindset where I did deserve or I was worthy of the money that I was asking for. That was one of the biggest things. Actually positioning myself where you would want to invest that kind of money in me. When I talked about my brand photography earlier, my blogging and just answering those different questions like that. So definitely my positioning and how I've heard other people. And then lastly, I would just say just education. I'm always for education. I read a lot of books. I haven't invested in a lot of coaching programs and I feel like people should also be wary of different coaching programs. You should try to find programs that are very niched down to what you do and not just kind of serve anybody that wants to be a, maybe you're a freelancer online. So if you're a designer, look for a program that helps you with design or talks about not just design but also the business of design. So education is my last piece, but just want to throw that out there as well.
Steve Folland: So mainly it's a number of things which have both built your confidence, but give confidence to the people buying from you, get you better at your craft in general anyway, but also attract a different clientele, I guess.
Karmen Kendrick: Right.
Steve Folland: Karmen, it's been so good chatting with you. Go to beingfreelance.com. As with all of our guests, there are links through so you can check out what Karmen is up to and say hi to her online. Also, because you mentioned The Futur, we had Melinda Lipsey who is often featured on The Futur, yeah.
Karmen Kendrick: I love Melinda.
Steve Folland: She talks a lot about how she got working with them and the way that she's developed her business as well in our chat with her. I'll put a link so you can go and listen to her episode as well. Remember, you're not alone being freelancer. Come and join us in the community, freelancers from around the world, Britain to hang out. You can find the link that you need to join that at beingfreelance.com. But yeah, for now, Karmen, thank you so much. And all the best being freelance.
Karmen Kendrick: Thank you so much for having me.
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