B2B Copywriter Helen Carrie
About this podcast episode…
B2B COPYWRITER HELEN CARRIE
What happens when the industry you’ve worked in for a decade gets shut down overnight? In this episode, host Steve Folland chats with Helen Carrie to talk through her complete freelance overhaul when COVID hit.
Helen worked in UK television production: traveling the world, interviewing celebrities; before the pandemic brought it all to a stop. Forced to evaluate her skills, she decided to try her hand at writing, starting at the very bottom.
Over a five-year gradual transition, Helen phased out TV production and built a thriving, sustainable B2B copywriting business focusing on brand copy, executive ghostwriting, and conversion copy. Keen to keep her skills and clients diverse to protect herself.
In this honest, funny, and practical conversation, Helen reveals the exact numbers behind her cold pitch strategy, how being intentionally "weird" on LinkedIn transformed her client base, and why setting boundaries gave her a much better quality of life.
In this episode of the Being Freelance podcast, Helen shares:
The reality of TV "freelancing" – Why traditional television production contracts often trap self-employed creatives in high-burnout, all-consuming feast-and-famine cycles rather than offering true flexibility.
Rebuilding a creative career from scratch – How an industry-wide shutdown forced a 5-year pivot from TV into B2B copywriting, starting with content mills paying fractions of a penny per word.
The power of "weird" cold outreach – Why sending highly personalised, quirky connection requests and emails generated a reliable 1% conversion rate to build her client base.
Finding your authentic voice on LinkedIn – Moving past corporate posting habits to turn social media into a steady inbound client lead generator.
Securing recurring revenue with retainers – Smart strategies for structuring ongoing client work, from fixed monthly project fees to quarterly brand strategy reviews.
Beating the "bad boss" mindset – Practical advice for us busy being our own boss, on setting firm boundaries, taking time off, and designing a business around your life instead of your life around your business.
This episode is available to watch in video here on the site, on Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Spotify.
Read a full transcript & get Links in the tabs.
More from HELEN CARRIE
Helen’s website
Helen on LinkedIn
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and B2B Copywriter Helen Carrie
Steve Folland:
How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Helen Carrie:
Okay, I actually have two freelance birth stories because I worked as a freelance TV producer, worked in TV for a decade before I pivoted into writing. So, I have two stories. They're both pretty messy, if I'm honest. But I guess that means that there's lots of learnings that came out of it.
Helen Carrie:
So, when I first moved to London after uni, I worked in-house for three years at an independent production company. I started off as a runner, so I was answering the phones. I would say, "Hello, Special Treats." That was the name of the company. It wasn't just like, yeah, a particular quirk of mine. I was like a cheap courier, taking hard drives all around Soho, carrying a lot of C-stands, like lots of sweating. Then I guess by the time I was getting itchy feet, I was an assistant producer or a producer or something like. That's what they were charging me out as anyway.
Helen Carrie:
But I did, I got itchy feet and I felt like the learning curve had sort of leveled off a bit, and I had all these skills. I'd been on a bit of a skill-collecting mission over those four years, and I was like, "Ooh, I just want to get out there and I suppose play the freelance field a little bit." Because in telly, it is the exception rather than the rule to work in-house.
Steve Folland:
Mm.
Helen Carrie:
And I'd had this staff job, which I was very pleased to have, at a small company, so I got to do a little bit of everything.
Helen Carrie:
But I was feeling like, actually, I need to see what these skills mean somewhere else. So, I was like, "Great, I'm going to go freelance." And I saved up at the time, like, oh, I don't know, about three months' worth of rent and bills. I spoke to every freelance person that I could get my hands on to try and ask them, basically, what they wished they'd known before they went freelance. And then I sent a lot of cold email in the style of Lonely Hearts columns. So I would send these cold email with the subject line, "Shooting AP, GSOH, WLTM." Is that it? Would like to meet- ... vibrant indie for freelance work, maybe more. Honestly, it was absolutely bat... I don't know if I'm allowed to swear.
Helen Carrie:
And I ended up, through one of those cold email interactions, getting offered what I can only describe as the dream edit job. It was a feature documentary about a rower, I want to say, that was circumnavigating the globe, something like that. The reason I'm a bit fuzzy on the details is because, spoiler alert, after I'd quit and gone on a three-week backpacking holiday around Eastern Europe, the whole thing fell through. I didn't really know that I needed a contract or any kind of other assurance beyond just like, "Oh, yeah, this sounds great," confirmed, but per email, in order to actually confirm a freelance gig back then. So that fell away while I was on holiday. I ended up basically the following week getting a call from a guy I'd met in a pub, who was Dan Snow's video director, saying, "Look, we're starting Dan Snow's digital history startup. We need somebody that can shoot, that can edit, that can produce, can direct, and we need them two weeks ago." So that ended up being my actual first freelance gig. Despite all my careful planning, it all kind of came about because I met some guy in a pub who was like, "We need somebody three weeks ago. How about you?"
Steve Folland:
Oh my gosh. Okay, and when was this?
Helen Carrie:
So this was 2017. So that's freelance birth story number one, but I don't do any of that anymore.
Steve Folland:
So Dan Snow, who is a big TV historian here-
Helen Carrie:
Yes
Steve Folland:
... in the UK, but then went off to start his own podcasts and YouTube channels and stuff like that. A huge empire.
Helen Carrie:
It's an empire of podcasting and digital content, yeah. But yeah, 2017.
Steve Folland:
Okay, before we get to... because now you're a B2B copywriter-
Helen Carrie:
Yes.
Steve Folland:
... because so clearly there's a shift.
Helen Carrie:
It's a circuitous route.
Steve Folland:
So how long... And as you say, in the media world, as in TV, a lot of it is freelance stuff.
Helen Carrie:
Mm.
Steve Folland:
So how long did you spend in that world?
Helen Carrie:
So yes, spoiler alert, I did pivot. But the pivot wasn't one day I'm a TV producer and the next day I'm a writer. The pivot itself actually happened over five years. So, I first went freelance in telly in 2017. The last freelance gig I did in telly was 2024, so that's only two years ago. But for the four years before my final TV freelance gig, I had started gradually building up my writing business, and in truth, gradually winding down my TV production work. So yeah, it was actually the opposite of an overnight pivot. It was about five years, like slowly winding one thing down and slowly winding the other up. And the, yeah, the pivot point or the catalyst for that change was COVID.
Steve Folland:
Ah, I was going to... Of course, I should have guessed it was.
Helen Carrie:
The plug basically got pulled on the entire UK TV and film industry overnight. So that was the start of three months of unemployment for me, which was the first time... And yeah, I'm a bit of a... I'm trying to let a lot of this go, but I certainly have a history of being a bit of a sort of perfectionist, people pleaser, overachiever, like one of those types. So being unemployed was like a big problem that suddenly I couldn't solve, that could quite easily have become an identity spiral. I don't know. Happily, it didn't, because I got a lot of free coaching that was available for TV professionals at that time, which I'm, yeah, incredibly grateful for. But broadly, I was like, "Ha, my skills that I have overnight have become completely worthless. What else can I sell, legally?"
Helen Carrie:
And I was thinking, "Well, writing is something that I've always enjoyed and always done," because it's very much sort of part and parcel of TV. You're always writing research notes, you're writing scripts, you're developing treatments. Writing kind of underpins everything. And it was something I enjoyed, so I was like, "Great, how hard can it be to just do writing for a living?" And it turns out, pretty hard. So yeah, my second freelance birth story basically starts with me putting up a ropey portfolio of, oh God, stuff I'd written for COVID mutual aid community groups and essays from university. Like, I really was that- ... silly about it, and then writing for content mills. I don't know if you know what a content mill is. It's as satanic as it sounds. They are basically, it's like an anonymous forum where writers see these sort of scrolling briefs, and you never know who you're writing for. It might say, "300 words about a car mechanic in Scarborough." You'll see a price. It was around between 0.01 and 0.04 pence per word. And so I was writing for fractions of pennies, these little blogs and websites and stuff. And because I'm from the Northeast, I'm from Scarborough, I ended up taking all of these gigs on this content mill that were for Scarborough-based businesses. I thought, "This is so nice. How lovely. All of these Scarborough businesses, I'll write for them." And then got a message over Facebook a few months later from a guy that ran a web design development agency saying, "Look, you don't know me, but you've been writing all of my websites and all of my client blogs for the last six months. Why don't we just cut out the middleman, come work for me freelance?" And so he became my first official freelance client.
Steve Folland:
Ww!
Helen Carrie:
As a writer.
Steve Folland:
Well, that's very surprising that they... you must have been doing a really good job that they tracked you down.
Helen Carrie:
I don't think I was doing a really good job. I was probably doing okay.
Steve Folland:
But this time, presumably, you didn't want to do it for pennies.
Helen Carrie:
No. So, he said, "How much do they pay you? I'll tell you how much I pay them, and then let's just meet in the middle." By this point, telly had kind of ground back into life, so this was the start of my... I mean, it doesn't feel like a portfolio career from the inside. It feels like a big old mess. But this was the start of me finding many different ways, and there have been many different ways over five years, of piecing my TV and my writing work together, while still being honest with both worlds about what I was doing, but in a way that didn't alienate either. Yeah, it was many different balancing and juggling acts and all of the mixed metaphors.
Steve Folland:
You start to get freelance TV work again, in which you already have a reputation. I was about to say, how did you continue to grow your writing business? But also, you chose to do that. You must have-
Helen Carrie:
Yeah
Steve Folland:
... been enjoying it, or were you sort of protecting yourself by keeping it going?
Helen Carrie:
Yeah, it's a really good question. So definitely what I've learned from all of this is that there is strength in diversification. And I applied that by keeping the both of them going, because broadly, writing for tech companies and working in the UK TV industry over the past five years has been pretty dicey, right? In each world, all has not been well. But because I was doing a bit of both, it did insulate me from that. And I think that's a lesson that's definitely stayed with me. Now I'm full in on writing, I don't do anything else. I still keep my client base diverse, so I make sure that no client is making up more than 25% of my income. My deliverables diverse, and there's definitely business advice that if you just focused on one thing, you could charge more and get clients more easily and all the rest of it. But I quite like doing a range of things. So it's a bit of a sidetrack, but yes, the kind of safety and diversity was part of it.
Helen Carrie:
Why did I want to build up the writing business? I realized I really enjoyed writing, and I also realized that TV freelancing wasn't true freelancing. By which I mean, you're called freelancers because there's almost no other way to get work. But the reality is that for the duration of your contract, you work for one independent production company on one program, and it is all-consuming. Especially if you're on location, which I almost always was, you're working very long hours from a set location or a set office. You either have a team or you have a boss, in my case, both. There is no time or brain space for you to be doing any other work. So, it almost has feast and famine kind of built in. You hear a lot about people, "Oh, beat the feast and famine cycle as a freelancer." But that was completely impossible to do in telly. One contract would consume you, then you would be spat back out into unemployment, and then you've got how all-consuming not having work is, if you're struggling to find it. And then there's the next really full-on feast of a TV thing.
Helen Carrie:
And don't get me wrong, when I was in my 20s, I worked a lot of presenter-led travelogues. So, I know it sounds like a cliché, but I genuinely did get to travel the world with my job. And I didn't mind not sleeping or having a social life or... none of that mattered to me because it was exhilarating and it was really fun. But it was also completely unsustainable, both in terms of friends and relationships, but also it takes its toll on your mental health. And even as someone, I'm lucky to have a pretty stable baseline of mental health, it still was very anxiety-inducing and very panic-inducing. And most people I know in telly have suffered with some kinds of mental illness as a result of the stress and the pressure and the burnout.
Helen Carrie:
So, I would never probably, if COVID hadn't happened and writing hadn't sort of presented itself as this other thing, have come to that conclusion by... Or it would have taken me a lot longer to come to that conclusion by myself. But there I was with almost comparing and contrasting that version of freelancing with freelance writing, which even though it took me a long time to build up a reputation, a portfolio, and client base and all of that, it was a very humbling experience. But even before I had all of that, I was getting these glimpses of like, "Wait a second. This is why you would actually choose to be freelance." Because okay, you don't have a pension or maternity, paternity, holiday. You don't have any of that stuff, but we didn't have that in TV either. But you do at least have the upside: the flexibility, the freedom, the control over who you work with, broadly setting your own prices and your own schedule, and deciding how your life looks. And don't get me wrong, it's not like a switch flicked and suddenly I was like, "I'm doing it perfectly." I'm absolutely still not. But being able to compare the two side by side, I was like, "That is the lifestyle I want." So, I kind of have been thinking of it as like, the quality of my anecdotes has got much, much worse, Steve, I'm afraid, over the last three years. But the quality of my life has... It sounds very profound. It's not meant to, but has improved in a strong and positive correlation. So, yeah, I've got really bad stories now, but I'm quite happy.
Steve Folland:
So, how did you build up your writing business then?
Helen Carrie:
Mm. So, I feel like I should put some kind of metaphysical shield up. I'm going to get probably some hate for this. Although I have seen that you've talked quite a lot about it on Being Freelance. I started with cold pitching. Not, I hope, although I'll let the recipients of my messages be the authority on this, not, I hope, the icky, nasty version of cold pitching. So, I did most of it via LinkedIn, but a lot, actually quite a bit via email as well. And similarly to the lonely heart style cold outreach that I did when I first wanted to go freelance in TV, they were weird. They were all weird. They had weird subject lines. Some of them were written sort of in the style of poems. And I'm quite an off-kilter soul, and I love that about myself, and I own that now, and I very much leaned into that. They were creative, they were playful, a bit odd.
Helen Carrie:
They were personalized. So, I probably over-indexed on this at the start. If I wasn't working, I would spend all day writing probably about six emails, because I would get so deep into their business and their clients and their work. But it meant that when I was writing that email, I was probably in like a quasi-creepy, or just a creepy, creepy way- ... being sort of able to say, "I love your work. No, really, I love your work." "I really liked that thing that's gathering dust at the bottom of your portfolio. It spoke to my soul." So, very personalized, very weird. And I guess I was trying to grab attention, like peacocking. I don't know what the term is.
Helen Carrie:
And there was also a numbers game element to it. So before I start sounding like holier than thou, I was sending hundreds of these every week. And especially when I started using LinkedIn as a way to do that, they would still be personalized, they would still be like, "Oh, it's quite strange," and they would still be targeted at a specific person. But you can only send about 300 characters along with the initial connection request, so I was sending these en masse. And I would track my connection acceptance rates, my reply rates, my acceptance to call booked rates, and then my ultimate conversion rate. And it ended up being something along the lines of, I've got the spreadsheet somewhere, about 35% of people who I approached in this way accepted the connection request. So I wasn't disgusting those people. So of every 100 I would send, about 35 would accept, and then about five or six we'd start chatting, and then about three of those I'd book a call, and about one I would get work from. So that's a 1% conversion rate. If you're sending enough, that became enough to run a business. But yeah, it was a slog. It was a real slog.
Steve Folland:
But how were you choosing who to approach?
Helen Carrie:
So, I had spreadsheets and I had a free version of Asana. And I still do this, actually. It was like an earlier version of what I still do. I would look at what I'd written over the past three, four months and figure out what I'd enjoyed, where the demand seemed to be, what paid relatively well, which clients were nice, broadly those four things, and just sort of slightly specialize more in that thing. And sometimes that thing was three things. So at one point, I think I was doing travel, tech, and finance. They were sort of my niches. But it was always like a kind of continual readjustment process, I guess.
Helen Carrie:
So for example, one of my favorite, favorite clients was a SaaS brand called Edume, and I got them through a cold pitch. And then because they were in SaaS and they were in ed tech and they were in frontline training and HR, like all of the kind of Venn diagrams, I guess, they were overlapped with, and I loved working with them, then I went and pitched other HR tech companies or other ed tech companies or other frontline tools. And I was able to say, "This is what I love doing. Look, I just did a big old brand audit and rewrote this website for this company," which is somebody who hopefully they respect and admire. "How about I do some of that for you?" So, yeah, I was always able to follow what I enjoyed, but also seem, and I guess- This didn't feel too dishonest. I'd literally just finished a project about one thing, and if I liked it and it was fun, I would go to like or someone in an adjacent world and be like, "Look, I just did this thing. It was really fun." So it gave me the confidence far before I was, and I'm still not, an expert or like a true specialist. It gave me the confidence to say, like I didn't have to say, "I'm an expert in ed tech." I could just say, "Look at this thing I just did." And if they liked it, then they could be like, "Great, you can do some of that for us."
Helen Carrie:
So yeah, the second stage of that was referrals and recommendations, but it took, I would say, best part of a year to just build a reputation and build a portfolio and get a stable client base because, yeah, I was a complete nobody, which, I mean, I don't consider myself an egomaniac, Steve, but I guess I did have a reputation in telly, and it had got to the point where I had a kind of list of credits and people I'd worked for and-
Steve Folland:
Yeah
Helen Carrie:
... shows that sounded impressive, so I could sort of tout that around. But in writing, I was like, "Nobody." And to be fair, in many ways still am, but I find a lot of joy and power in that anonymity now.
Steve Folland:
So, when you were approaching them on LinkedIn, you're making a connection, which is nice actually, because it's different to just sending a cold email because-
Helen Carrie:
Yes
Steve Folland:
... in theory, if they're connecting with you, they're going to see what you post. So were you posting?
Helen Carrie:
I wasn't. That did come later. Probably started posting on LinkedIn about two and a half years ago, and I would completely discount the first year of that. Because for the first year, I just thought that posting on LinkedIn, I had this idea in my head of a professional person. I don't know what she looks like. She's probably got straighter hair, right? And definitely she's wearing a tie. And I sort of thought, "Well, that is a professional person. What would she write?" So for the first year, and it's so funny because you see people that are like, "Just be consistent." I was posting five days a week, like clockwork, but I wasn't posting as me. I was posting as that person with the straight hair and the tie and whatever. And so, of course, it got absolutely no engagement, and it just didn't work. It didn't feel good. It didn't work by any metric.
Helen Carrie:
So I would almost discount the first year, and then I guess I started finding my voice a bit more on LinkedIn about 18 months ago. And again, that's all just been a process of being more weird, and that comes naturally to me because that just is who I am. And that was happening alongside me still being primarily outbound, and then the initial clients I had were kind of referring me on to people. So, even though I was posting on LinkedIn, it's only really in the last year that that's become an inbound machine, which it really is now, which still totally blows my mind. But even when I started feeling good about it, it still wasn't bringing in business. The business was still very much me going after things, saying, "Look, here are my wares. I'm touting them. Would you like to buy my wares?" It was very much that until, yeah, I guess the last year or so.
Steve Folland:
I mean, it's funny that you were sending quirky, "weird," in quotation marks, like cold outreach messages, connection requests, and yet posting as the person with the straighter hair and the tie.
Helen Carrie:
That's so true. That's so true. Oh, Steve, you should be my therapist. Where were you-
Steve Folland:
This is it
Helen Carrie:
... where were you 18 months ago to be like, "Well, this is working. This isn't."
Steve Folland:
But you're saying that what you're posting now is working, is bringing... So it's not all sending out new connection requests.
Helen Carrie:
Yeah.
Steve Folland:
People are finding you through-
Helen Carrie:
Yeah. Yeah, which is, I mean, it still slightly blows my mind because it's not entirely unstrategic. Like, there are sort of woolly pillars, pillars made of wool, not marble, right, in terms of what I write on LinkedIn. They're definitely not all provide value to your ICP. There's a little bit of that because I do want to use it to find clients, but there's a lot of just finding community. I mean, I created a new budget line for myself this year called Make More Freelance Friends, and that's how I found you guys in Being Freelance. So a lot of it is building community and getting to know people. I've met some incredible people on LinkedIn who will probably never give me work, and that's absolutely fine. I mean, also you don't know how karma works. Like, it's all been a process of kind of getting to know people, and I've met some really, truly inspirational people from all over the world. I mean, it's crazy that it's just a social media platform because it has brought me a lot of joy. But in terms of the business, the pillars would be a little bit of like, broadly, what would my ICP, like a marketing manager or someone who hires writers at a kind of company that I want to work with, what do they care about? Like, nothing more complicated than that, just what they care about.
Steve Folland:
And-
Helen Carrie:
Oh.
Steve Folland:
Well, no, I was just going to say an ICP stands for?
Helen Carrie:
Oh, sorry. Ideal Client Profile. So-
Steve Folland:
Right
Helen Carrie:
... technically, an ideal client profile is made up of these sort of like demographic details. How old is that person? What's their name? What's their role? What's their income level? And then psychographics. So, what keeps them up at night? What are their desires and fears and pains and priorities and all that kind of stuff? And it's not that that's invalid. Like, that's definitely the nuts and bolts of what an ICP is. But I actually found it easier to think about ICPs in terms of people who were already giving me work. So, as an example, using that ed tech company again, my initial contact there was a content marketing manager who's now their head of content. And instead of trying to make up what my ICP might care about or what position they might hold or what they might be interested in or what they might prioritize, I basically just populated that kind of persona with what I knew about her because I'd worked really closely with her. And she's probably not the absolute epitomic marketing manager, but it was a really useful place to start because I think sometimes these concepts, especially as someone coming from a different world where, and I feel embarrassed that I didn't expand the acronym, but a lot of the jargon in branding and marketing can be quite alienating, and I found it much easier to give it a kind of concrete face rather than it being sort of an abstract thing. But, yeah, so people that I want to hire me, what do they care about? Broadly answer those sort of questions or be useful in that sphere.
Helen Carrie:
What makes me different and, small I, interesting and unique? So there's a few different things, but the kind of headline there has been, I used to work as a TV producer and then I pivoted and now I'm a writer. I've not met anyone else, and I've also gone down quite a deep Reddit rabbit hole. I've not even found anyone else who has exactly that sort of mix of things. So that's been quite a nice thing to kind of talk about that makes me stand out, makes me memorable. And then just, I don't know, having fun, meeting people, coming up with ideas on LinkedIn, and not just having to wear the tie and prove value constantly, but just doing what's fun and, yeah, what's weird.
Steve Folland:
So even though you now have a regular stream of clients and presumably returning clients?
Helen Carrie:
Mm-hmm. Retainers and returners.
Steve Folland:
Nice. But you're still doing, it sounds like, some form of regular cold connection requests, building that network still.
Helen Carrie:
To a lesser extent with prospects, like with people that I might want to work with, only because, and I cannot overstate how grateful I feel to be in this position because I can so viscerally remember not being in this position, but only because of the retainers and returners, which I chose. I sought that out, but I may be slightly over-indexed on retainers and returners. So that has been a very stable, the total opposite of my experience in telly, that has been this really nice sort of stable basis for my business. Then with the inbound from LinkedIn, which, I mean, it's not like I'm getting a message a day, but I'll get a few a month, most of which I don't have capacity for because of the retainers and returners. It would feel a bit...
Helen Carrie:
Okay, and I continue to post, so if people see my content and want to reach out, that's still obviously a possibility. I don't do loads of outreach now. Every now and again, I still do. Basically, if there's a company that I've got a crush on, and there's a couple at the moment that I'm like, "Oh, I would love to work for that company." Like, if I've got a crush, then I will just be like, "Hi." "Do you want to work with me? Can I work with you?" It's definitely less of a spray and pray and more of like, "Got my eye on them."
Steve Folland:
Right.
Helen Carrie:
"I would love to put them in my portfolio." But yeah, I would still definitely the sort of rejection exposure therapy of just being ignored and denied and all of that stuff so many times is beautiful, right? Because there's basically nobody who I wouldn't contact now.
Steve Folland:
And so in all of that time, did you find there was... Basically, I'm thinking B2B copywriter, well, that is a niche in itself. We've gone for businesses, but did you niche within that? I'm just wondering what you found your services were, how you would put yourself out in that respect.
Helen Carrie:
Yeah. I know people use these terms kind of interchangeably. The easiest way I find to describe actually what I do is that there are three things that I offer in the B2B space. So there's brand copy and brand strategy. So that was like what I was doing with EduMe. I can audit your brand, where it's at at the moment. I can rewrite your web copy. And we also would do work sort of further upstream on messaging, positioning, and who they're trying to attract. Then there's executive ghostwriting. So I write for C-suite and execs on LinkedIn. I do blogs, I do newsletters, I've done ebooks. I think that's all. And then there's also a conversion copy piece. So one of my biggest and longest-standing clients, I do conversion and performance copy for them. So that's ads, landing pages, in-product pop-ups, broadly stuff that gets prospects to buy from them if they're not currently customers, and stuff that gets current customers to stay with them. So there's three buckets, and this is kind of what I was saying before.
Helen Carrie:
If my offering was a little bit more streamlined, I'm sure there are people that say that it should be, but I love that these three things give me a lot of variety, they give me a lot of contrast. And again, it's skill collecting. Like I was saying right at the top, when I was a runner, it was like, "Oh, this is so fun. I can record sound." By the way, I can't record sound. My sound recording's dreadful. But I can shoot, I can edit, I can produce, I can direct. It was like, "Ooh." I could even use a teleprompter back in the day. And that was so fun. And I feel like it's a version of the same thing. And I just love web copy. I love web copy and brand strategy because, broadly, AI has made everybody sound the same. So there is this incredible opportunity for just sound... You don't even need to sound weird. You don't even need to be wacky to stand out anymore. You just need to find your thing and even just whisper it, and then suddenly you're different. So that is like, it's become even more exciting to me now since AI, because I guess in some ways the bar is much lower, but the opportunity for differentiation and just to say fun stuff and stand out is so much bigger.
Steve Folland:
So what have you found the most challenging bit of being freelance?
Helen Carrie:
Hmm.
Helen Carrie:
I struggle with not taking everything really personally, and I'm sure this applies to lots of different disciplines, but writing is so close to thinking. And obviously, you're delivering stuff to briefs, to meet objectives, and it's in a particular format, in a particular style, and a tone of voice. So it's not like I'm just having these flights of fancy and then delivering that. But it's really difficult when, or I found it really difficult when you get feedback. The feedback is like... you. To not take all of that very, very personally, to sort of separate the work from my identity in a way. Yeah, I've struggled with that. And I've also, it's taken me a while just to figure out how to actually run a business. That's been very much trial and error. Besides just the doing the work stuff, the how to run a business in a way that's sustainable and enjoyable, and it's got enough structure, but not so much that I...
Helen Carrie:
And I mean this is a related challenge, but for a very long time, I brought sort of employee mindset, not even from being an employee, but from freelance work in telly with me, where I would be so rigid. I would work from the same place for the same hours with no breaks, and it was, yeah, very stifling creatively, and also not at all how my energy flows or how my person... That sounds very woo-woo, but I have started planning more around energy. So I'll have a workout in the middle of the afternoon and then come back and sit down again at 4:00, and I'll feel so energized. And a lot of my clients are in the States, so it means that when they're logging on, I cannot seem like I'm nodding off at my desk, but I can have that 9:00 a.m. energy. And taking time off and having holidays and letting myself be more flexible. Yeah, definitely I was treating myself, I was a very bad boss to myself for quite a while. And that's been a challenge to kind of, yeah, shed that.
Steve Folland:
What's your experience of retainers been? Because you've mentioned them. How do you get them to be retainers?
Helen Carrie:
When I found out that a retainer was a thing, I was like, "This is the holy grail of freelancing, surely, because you've got the variety, but you've also got the stability." You know that that chunk of income is coming in every month. This is too good to be true. So some of it was just applying to freelance jobs that were people that were asking for freelancers that they wanted to work with on an ongoing basis. So ghostwriting is a good example because generally, if there's a blog or a newsletter or LinkedIn content, if your relationship with that person is going well, and the engagement is good and it's doing what it needs to for the business, like generating leads or building reputation or building authority or audience, whatever their kind of objective is, if it's doing that, then they want to keep doing it. So it was seeking out the kinds of work that almost are more likely to be conducive to retainers. So a website project would be the opposite of that, right? And I love website projects, but that's not likely to... The website in and of itself is not likely to be a retainer. But so finding the kinds of work that have that kind of regularity built in.
Helen Carrie:
Asking. So, having just said that website work is unlikely to be a retainer, I did a website project for a client. It started with a brand audit, became a website rewrite, and then I just said, "I really love working with you. Is there anything else I can help you with?" And since then, we have basically not stopped working together for a year and a half. And every quarter we... It's interesting when you're asking about the different structures of retainers. There's sort of probably, there's very sort of different buckets because with something like LinkedIn ghostwriting retainer, it's broadly the same kind of packet of stuff every month. So I'll charge a project fee for that. But with this client I'm thinking of where it was brand work, then copy work, then some LinkedIn ghostwriting, then some flyers for events, and now emails, and then I've rewritten their website because they're changing their positioning. That is more of every quarter we... I hate measuring time in business quarters, but every few months- ... we'll sit down and I'll be like, "Let's talk about what you've got coming up in the next three months. What there do you need help with?" And then I'll scope that out for them. So that's a bit more bespoke, and I'm sure someone will come at me and being like, "That's too labor-intensive." But they're an amazing client and I've loved everything that I've done with them. So that's a bit more flexible, where you figure out in advance whether there's going to be need, and if you get on and the working relationship's good, then you figure out how you can kind of meet that need ongoing.
Helen Carrie:
Then there's another client who I admittedly have been working with them on retainer for before I started charging project fees, and I work with them on a day rate. However, I've racked my brain so many times to think of how I could restructure that. And because this client, it's not just a different few projects every quarter, it's like different things every week. So I honestly, even though I understand that working to a day rate isn't maybe the best way to price things as a freelancer, and I'd rather be on a project fee with them, with this client, I really can't figure out how any other setup would work. So mostly scope, yeah, scope out what they need for a quarter or a month, and then project fees.
Steve Folland:
Now, Helen, I always do this thing where I ask for three facts about yourself to make-
Helen Carrie:
Okay
Steve Folland:
... two true, one a lie, and let me figure out the lie.
Helen Carrie:
Okay.
Steve Folland:
What do you have for me?
Helen Carrie:
Okay. So I have made Michael Sheen cry.
Steve Folland:
Okay.
Helen Carrie:
I once flew to Berlin at 12 hours notice to interview David Bowie's son about a film he was directing for Netflix. Joanna Lumley's nickname for me is Sweet Hell.
Steve Folland:
Okay. So, how did you make Michael Sheen, one of our greatest actors, cry?
Helen Carrie:
So, I worked with Michael on a film called "The Secret Million Pound Giveaway," I think is what they called it in the end, which was looking at the poverty premium and the effects of high-cost credit. And on our very first day of filming, he's from Port Talbot in Wales, and our very first day of filming, we walked with him along the beach in Port Talbot and were interviewing him about his life there, him growing up there in the community, and I was off-camera interviewing. And I didn't really say very much, but just asking him about his childhood and his connection to the area, and he started crying. He is also, I might add, an actor, and therefore there's definitely a version of this story in which he made himself cry. But I'm going to take it.
Steve Folland:
Berlin. You flew to Berlin at short notice to interview David Bowie's son. What was the film?
Helen Carrie:
"Mute." I've not watched it, but it was a sequel to another film called "Moon," which is apparently very critically acclaimed.
Steve Folland:
I mean, of course that could be true. All right. Let's go to Joanna Lumley-
Helen Carrie:
Yeah
Steve Folland:
... who called you Sweet Hell.
Helen Carrie:
Sweet Hell. Yeah. So I worked with Joanna on a documentary about climate change, and she refused to travel first class by train. Our first shoot day was up in the highlands of Scotland, and we all traveled together on normal class, whatever it's called, the normal train, me and the crew and the director and Joanna. And she brought a picnic of boiled eggs, and that was the- ... in a bag, like in a little bag. She's so fabulous. And she, on that day, nicknamed me Sweet Hell, which she continued calling me throughout the rest of the shoot. And I very nearly got it changed by deed poll because I just thought... People called me Hells, H-E-L-L-S, like the lager. And my brother calls me Hell because he's really rude. But no one... She was like, "Sweet Hell." And I was like, "I am that person. I am Sweet Hell. I will be Sweet Hell."
Helen Carrie:
Yeah. Lovely.
Steve Folland:
Okay.
Steve Folland:
Which of these is a lie?
Steve Folland:
No disrespect, but the Berlin Bowie son story is quite boring.
Helen Carrie:
No.
Steve Folland:
No, but it makes me think it's true. If you were making up a lie, you could make it as extravagant as you wanted. Are you trying to double-bluff me? Michael Sheen crying. I mean, both that and Joanna Lumley sound very believable, although I'm still not convinced that Joanna Lumley would turn down a first-class seat.
Helen Carrie:
Yeah.
Steve Folland:
I don't even think she'd get a say in it. I think you would put her in first class. Yeah. So even though it feels so true, I'm saying sweetie, sweetie, Sweet Hell, Joanna Lumley is the lie.
Helen Carrie:
So the lie was Berlin. The lie was Berlin.
Steve Folland:
So Joanna Lumley really did call you Sweet Hell.
Helen Carrie:
She really did.
Steve Folland:
But more importantly for that story, didn't travel in first class-
Helen Carrie:
No
Steve Folland:
... but sat next to you with a bag of boiled eggs.
Helen Carrie:
Yeah. Yeah, it was good times. It's been all downhill since then.
Steve Folland:
All right. If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Helen Carrie:
It would be don't wait to give yourself permission to plan your work around your life rather than the other way around, right? Just that. Planning your work around your life isn't like a reward that you have to earn or like something that you have to build up to.
Helen Carrie:
You can just start from there and continue on. And it took me such a long time to sort of, yeah, shake off the employee mindset and all the kind of needless structure and guilt I had for like, "I can't leave my desk in the middle of the afternoon. I can't take this Tuesday off. I can't work through this weekend so I can take this Monday and Friday." All of that kind of stuff that actually no one's going to tell me off. I'm not doing it wrong. Just figure out what you want your life to look like and then make your work fit that.
Steve Folland:
And so how does that look for you now?
Helen Carrie:
I mean, better but not perfect. I've made a few improvements in that realm in the last year. So I now co-work somewhere at least once a month. I know that doesn't sound loads, but it's once a month. And I'm actually recently upping that to twice a month. Big news. Like I was saying, I just exercise in the middle of the afternoon because I never really wanted to work out in the morning, and I've got a dog who's very asleep just here, so we walk him in the morning. And in an evening, I'm knackered. I'm not a night owl, so I didn't really want to exercise on an evening. And I was like, "Wait a second. I'm falling asleep at my desk mid-afternoon. Why not use that as the exercise break?" There's no reason I have to work a nine-to-five, so that was another good thing. I've recently started taking Friday afternoons off, Steve, which I still feel a little bit guilty about. But better to have done the thing and feel a bit guilty rather than just let the guilt control you and not do the thing. So yeah, I don't work Friday afternoons anymore, which is really nice. And this is something that I'm planning towards but have not yet done. I'm taking time off to go on holiday for a few weeks, and it will be the most amount of time that I've had off and just said to all my clients, "Look, I'm just not available for this period of time. Cover me, or I can recommend somebody in my place, or however you want to do it, but I'm not going to be doing that work. I'm not working double for you the month before. Don't pay me for the month that I'm off." But that's another sort of... Yeah, I guess it's in some ways setting more boundaries and being firmer about the boundaries, but yet at the same time, being more flexible in my approach to work and life in general and giving myself, again, giving myself permission to do things and then figure out how I can make it work afterwards.
Steve Folland:
Helen, it's been so good to talk to you. Go to beingfreelance.com. There'll be a link through so that you can find Helen online, most notably on LinkedIn, of course. And Helen's in the Being Freelance Community, so you can always come and find us in there, too. Notice that she takes Friday afternoons off. That means she could, in theory, join the co-working of a Friday morning, you see. No one would take-
Helen Carrie:
Absolutely could
Steve Folland:
... the whole day off.
Steve Folland:
So yes, beingfreelance.com, where you'll find loads of other guests as well. You know the drill. Anyway, Helen, thank you so much and all the best at being freelance.
Helen Carrie:
Thank you so much, Steve. This was so much fun.
EPISODE SPONSORED BY GOLD STAG ACCOUNTS
There are plenty of accountants out there - what you need is one that totally understands freelance life.
One who knows how freelancers think and work, ready to offer support when you need it year round, not just at tax return time.
Join over 800 freelancers and small businesses that trust Martin and the team at Gold Stag to take care of the accounts, whilst they take care of the stuff they’re good at.
Book a call at GoldStagAccounts.co.uk
