alison-grade-2020-06-19.mp3

Alison Grade: [00:00:00] I really believe freelancing is something that everybody can do. It's not just something that you do because you're between jobs, it's a valuable and empowering way of having a career and running your life. My book is all about empowering people and inspiring them to take that step and giving them the tools to achieve it. I believe that everyone can be a great freelancer. You just need to have the tools. And I believe I've written those down so you can do that yourself.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:00:44] What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the @TheArtistsOfDataScience be sure to follow the show on Instagram @TheArtistsOfDataScience and on Twitter at @ArtistsOfData. I'll be sharing awesome tips and wisdom on Data science, as well as clips from the show join the Free Open Mastermind selection by going to bitly.com/artistsofdatascience, where I'll keep you updated on biweekly open office hours. I'll be hosting for the community. I'm your host Harpreet Sahota. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:01:31] Our guest today is an award winning entrepreneur and freelancer who is skilled at transforming creative concepts into business reality.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:01:39] She accomplishes this through various mediums, including films, mentorship and the written word. During her career, she's produced over 7000 minutes of film and television and has worked on everything from documentaries to feature films. She's been a professional freelancer all her career who fully understands that you want to make your career work for you on your terms and determined by your own definition of success. She's consolidated her experience and expertise into a guidebook which talks you through absolutely everything that you need to know to start your successful self-employed life. Her book helps up and coming. Freelancers get their bearings straight from day one, helping you develop your personal brand, pick up financial essentials, grow your client base, manage your work life balance, negotiate deals and value your time and become more established. So please help me in welcoming our guest today, author of Penguin best selling book, The Freelance Bible. Allison, great. Alison, thank you so much for taking time at your schedule to be here today. I really, really appreciate you coming by the show.

Alison Grade: [00:02:37] Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to be here. Really nice to chat to you. Looking forward to it.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:02:42] So talk to us about your journey. How did you get to where you are today? What are some of the struggles that you had to face along the way? And how did you overcome them?

Alison Grade: [00:02:50] Cool. So I did my university in England. I was lucky enough to get into Cambridge University. I got to be a scientist. Actually, I did math, physics, chemistry - A Level. I got into science and got into the natural sciences. And then over that summer period, my boyfriend and I was like, Oh, I'm at NYU, I'm doing film studies. It's so cool, you know, do something more progressive. So I ended up changing to social and political sciences in my first year cause I was really interested in psychology, anyway. And they both offered at one from a science background among from a social background. And so I was like, OK, I'll do social political sciences. And that led me on to management studies in my final year. So it was always around business for me, but it wasn't traditional business. I had grown up in quite a media based family and I went in and I looked at all the jobs on offer and all the companies and I run out again because it was just I didn't identify with it. And I was like, well, I'm just going to give it a try in the media industry, see what happens. And kind of still here I am doing having reinvented myself in so many different ways as a freelancer, but maybe it's more iterated than reinvented. So, yeah, that's why I wrote the book, because nobody gave me a guidebook nobody teaches it. So I'm like, well, actually I know about this. I'm going to write it down.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:04:05] I love it. I'd love to get into a bit of freelance Bible. So before you do that, I'm curious, what are some of the documentaries and feature films that you've worked on that perhaps our audience might have heard of?

Alison Grade: [00:04:14] It's been very, very UK specific. Most recently, I've been doing live to cinemas and online for theatrical productions.

Alison Grade: [00:04:24] So the most fun one, the really big one. You'll know the show is Rocky Horror Show. It was the fortieth anniversary and they did an all star one night celebrity production and they got some of the original people back in to play different roles and had all these different guest stars. And we went live to, I think it was six hundred cinemas across Europe. So that was pretty cool. But then otherwise I just did very - you know, much mainly UK type productions on factual entertainment, entertainment. So people worked with people like Desot Conner. It's a knockout, but not the really early one. The late one that came back with Frank Bruno - remember the boxer? He was in that he was like the umpire school guy. So, yeah, probably not so much that's really hit Canada, right?

Harpeet Sahota: [00:05:09] Yeah. I'll definitely include some of that stuff into the show notes and give our audience an opportunity to check that stuff out. I'm like I'm interested to see how the future of theater going, movie going and film in general will be affected by our global pandemic situation. Be interesting to see how that plays out in the future. I'm looking forward to just being able to watch feature films at home, just kind of rent them through through some app and watch them at home. But do you have any thoughts around that as to how things might be affected?

Alison Grade: [00:05:36] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'm doing a lot of work on this at the moment. I mean, I think it's very, very different for film and TV compared to theaters and festivals. And you know its, the big divide is those that are reliant on ticket sales to the public and those that aren't. So film and TV, which is not reliant on that you know. I think actually in the UK we're quite ahead of the curve. Things are starting to open up. All the soap operas are happening. I know you know I've got pitches in with the BBC at the moment that we're waiting to hear on because they can see the black holes in. Particularly the linear channels and see the black holes in the schedules. And even when you look at Netflix and it's like, how many times can I look at the same things? We're all looking for new, fresh content. So film and TV is actually coming down the line and I think it will open up up the theaters. That is really worrying because it absolutely is about having people in confined spaces for long periods of time. And you know confine spaces, lack of ventilation, long periods of time, that's absolutely right, breeding ground for coronavirus, so you know that's going to be challenging. So so we'll say it's too early to tell for some of them, but I'm confident for film and TV at the moment.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:06:45] Awesome. Thank you for your insight onto that. So yea, lets' get into your book The Freelance Bible. Let's start with a question that's pretty kind of high level in general, but I think it's really important. What does being a freelancer mean?

Alison Grade: [00:06:57] I think for me, the key thing about being a freelancer is that, you know, you are in charge of your destiny. You're not waiting for someone to say, please do this. You know what? If your boss say this is the next thing I want you to do.

Alison Grade: [00:07:10] You've got to find your own work to do. And what comes with that is you're expected to have your own tools of the trade. So just like, you know, if you need a plumber to come around to your house, they don't arrive and go "So where will the plumbing tools?". You you buy them in because they have those tools. So, you know, the thing about being a freelancer is you all that you're selling yourself, you're selling your services. But with that comes huge autonomy because you can work where you like, when you like. I mean, within reason, your clients are going to have deadlines and stuff. But for me, I'm quite an early bird. I'll often start half-five, six o'clock in the morning and do two or three hours work before I worry about giving the kids breakfast. Well, particularly at the moment because I don't have to do school run so I can get a big chunk of work and which allows me to have time with the kids and go back to work and so I can just structure my day to work when my brain actually wants to work rather than when the company says my brain should be working and that allows me to be most productive.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:08:05] I like that a lot to be able to set your own schedule and do stuff at your own pace. And much like you, I'm quite an early bird as well. So I do a lot of my podcast work like between four thirty a.m. to like eight a.m..

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Harpeet Sahota: [00:08:51] I was wondering if we could kind of get into how we can identify as freelancers. You talk about I-shaped people and T-shaped people in your book. I wonder if you could touch on that and maybe touch on how we can find our identity as a freelancer.

Alison Grade: [00:09:05] Yeah, absolutely. I think most people are familiar with the I-shaped person as a freelancer. And an I-shaped person is somebody who has a huge depth of knowledge. They've got a huge depth of knowledge in that field.

Alison Grade: [00:09:17] And that's the very traditional model of freelance like people who are hired for very high level specialist skills. So you see that you know, the film industry, a very good example, you know, your director of photography, your art director, you know, your producer. So the producer will come on to them in a minute. But those people are very I-shaped that you hire them for small periods of time to deliver a very high level. And that's been traditional freelancing. But I think increasingly T-shaped people are freelancers. And T-shaped people who are people who've got a good depth of knowledge. But they've got this kind of "T" across the top, which is that breadth of collaboration, and it's their ability to enable teams to function to bring people together. So as a production manager and TV, which was the role I did, I had to talk to every department. I had to make sure I in the right place at the right time and not spend too much money. So I had to know lots about different departments. So I had to be able to have an informed conversation with the camera team, post-production, lighting, art. I didn't actually have to pick up the camera or use it. So that's what the producers do as well. So that T-shaped person is that translator, that enabler. Yeah, it was really interesting, a friend of mine who's not necessarily like the person who you would really think would be a brilliant freelancer. He wrote me a text when he got to the T-shaped and in the book and he went, oh, my God, you've just changed my life. He said, I just always tried to be an I-shaped person. I just didn't fit. Now you've just given me permission to be a T-shaped person, I get it. And it's understanding the value that we bring. And I don't bring I-shaped values. I bring that translator and that enabler. And that is a freelance skill very much these days.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:10:56] I think a lot of people, my audience the data scientists, might be able to relate with the analogy of specialist versus generalist. Whereas if you're a data scientist and you specialize heavily in like natural language processing, that would be kind of your I-shaped. Right. You'd be heavily focused on natural language processing, whereas if you're kind of a jack of all trades Data scientists are generalists that T-shaped. You know a little bit of everything and you can kind of draw on all those experiences to solve whatever you have. Another analogy I think would be the foxes or rather the hedgehogs versus the foxes concept. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but yeah, that's very interesting. I really enjoy that. You kind of define those and broke that down. So you've got a Three C's analysis in your book that could help us become better freelancers. I was wondering if we can touch on that. He can maybe walk us through that at a high level.

Alison Grade: [00:11:45] Oh, absolutely. So the Three C's comes from, you know, doing my MBA at INSEAD and doing the marketing strategy in the marketing planning. And that's the basis of your marketing plan and your marketing research that Three C's. So it's Customers, Company, and Competition. So if we start with company, that's you as a freelancer, that's your skills, that's what you bring to the table. So you can kind of do that SWOT analysis of what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses. And I do a lot of work on the skills audit in the book, where you can really drill into that. And that's an exercise about that. And then you can look at what are the opportunities for some of my skills, what are the threats to it. So you can do a really good piece of research around what do I have to offer as a freelancer. So, that's your company. Then you can start looking at your customers. Who are they? Who are they at the moment? Who do you want them to be? Where are they based? What sectors are they in? What do they want from you? Are they big companies or they small companies? You know, what what do they value? What do they care about? You can really start to literally draw a picture of who these customers are. You might find there are different groups and you've got more than one type of customer.

Alison Grade: [00:12:50] And then the competition's really important because we've got to know who's who's off to that pot of money that we're after. Who who are we up against? And you've got two types of competition.

Alison Grade: [00:13:00] You've got that direct competition. So that might be like, as you said, the data scientist. And you're up against all the colleagues who, you know, who were in the same field. So that's your direct competition. But they can also be collaborative partners. It might be to actually work together. And you put in a joint pitch to deliver something, because actually between the two of you, you can pitch for something bigger that you might not be able to do. Equally in TV production, there are some projects that I work on where I need one camera operator. But there are others when I need six or seven. So they've got to work together as a team as well as operating solo. So you'll competition can also be collaboration, but as well as that direct competition, it's really important to understand who the indirect competition is. So who's your indirect competition? What I mean by that is people who are pitching for the same pot of money, but actually what they're offering to deliver is something different. So I talk in my book about a company that I ran a few years ago, which was Girls Angels. And we specialize in teaching women how to ride motorbikes. And yes, we had direct competition, that we had other motorbike training schools, but really we were less in competition with them than we were for the customers disposable income because they didn't need to get a license.

Alison Grade: [00:14:13] They wanted to get a bike license. So actually, we were up against a holiday, a new outfit, a night out, a different type, of course. So we had to sell them the dream, you know, Roman holiday dream girl on a motorcycle, freedom, all of that kind of stuff. We had to sell them the big dream that they were going to have more fun with us than the other things they could spend the money on. So understanding who that indirect competition is, and I'm sure in your field as well, you're often competing for research funds and that kind of thing whereby you it will be different projects that are getting funded. So not only have you got to prove your projects right, you've got to prove it to the most valuable, the most interesting, the most impactful, whatever it might be. So that's your kind of Three C's analysis and that really gets you started to think about who am I? What am I trying to do? Where what can I offer the marketplace?

Harpeet Sahota: [00:15:01] And then once we're out there, once we've done this analysis for ourselves, we can understand our position in the marketplace. What can we do to make sure that we're pricing our services adequately?

Alison Grade: [00:15:12] Pricing. I talk about an awful lot with people because it's really, really hard. I mean, first of all, we've got to you've got to do your basic numbers and do your spreadsheet and know that what is actually going out every week or every month and what you need to earn after your taxes. So you've got to do that as your baseline. And that's like that's like your baseline sales projections for the year. But what's going you got to remember that what's going out of your pocket in your personal income is post-tax. So as a freelancer, I get paid, including all my tax on in the UK, it's national insurance. So I have to put some of that aside. So whatever you calculate for your personal expenditure, you've got to add back in the taxes that you might be collecting that you don't have to pay to the government. So just just to remember, not to forget that bit. So then you've got a base level of what you need to own. So from that you can start looking at it and slicing and dicing it in different ways. You can look at, well, OK, if I've got a sense of what my daily or weekly rate should be, I can just work out then how many days in the year I need to work to earn that.

Alison Grade: [00:16:16] I always to try and break even at around a hundred and twenty, maxing out at about a hundred and fifty work days per year. Because I've got - as a freelancer, I've still got to go out and well I've got to go out and find the clients. I've got to find the business, I've got to do the admin, I've got to do the financial paperwork. I've got lots of other stuff that I need to do so I can't plan to be working three hundred and sixty five days or say you go forty seven, forty eight weeks, you get four or five weeks holiday a year. I still can't be planning to getting paid work all of those days, so I tend to work on about a hundred and twenty to one hundred fifty days a year. So if I look at what I need to all I can divide that one hundred, twenty hundred fifty that starts to give me a sense of the daily rate. So that I'm getting some more information and then I can do some benchmarking and I can look at you know, what jobs are being advertised, what freelance call out there are what other projects are going on.

Alison Grade: [00:17:03] I could start baselining against those. Again, if I see a permanent job, I'm kind of going, well, that's one salary level. But actually it's going to cost that company another well certainly about twenty five percent by the time I give them a desk, a computer paid the extra employer's taxes and stuff. So bearing in mind that so can benchmark. I can talk to people, I can ask people on my network I can use mentors and stuff. What do you think it's worth? And so we're starting to build up a picture of what the value is. And you can look at, well, where am I deploying my skills? If I'm teaching how to be a great filmmaker that's one type of rate. If I'm being a filmmaker, that's a different rate. But it's a different rate on a small project to a big project. So I've got to look at the context around that, and the audience as well. If I'm working for a company that's developing an idea that's speculative, I might do a deal that's lower price, but gets me on the list for when it comes off. So I'm starting to do a whole mixture of research to start looking at what sort of price might I charge.

Alison Grade: [00:18:02] But at the same time, I always take a step back because we can get very stuck focusing on that. And it's a really important exercise. But I take a step back and I think, well, actually, what is the value to my client of what I'm doing? If I'm going to increase sales by twenty percent through what I'm doing, I'm worth an awful lot. I'm going to increase sales by one hundred percent, I'm worth even more. If I'm going to save some money on the bottom line, I'm worth a lot. So I've got to put that into the context of the value that I'm delivering for the client. Why are they coming to me?

Alison Grade: [00:18:32] What problem or need am I solving for them, by the work that I do. And that starts to unlock a different value in pricing conversation. But I still need to know my baselines before I go into those conversations.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:18:46] I like that approach, pricing yourself based on the value that you're contributing. It reminds me of this - forgot where I read it, but there's a building that had this crazy leak going on, nonstop leak or whatever. And the owner of the building called a plumber and the plumber charged him five hundred dollars to change one washer. The washer cost like 50 cents or something. But knowing which washer to change, which screwed a screw in that's that value based knowledge you need to build into your price. Right. All that experience and expertise you have. Another question, kind of think you might have covered it with your previous answer. But I think let's take, for example, a case study. I have a cousin who is a technical writer who's doing freelance work on the side, kind of in adjacent spaces, such as blog post writing and writing other technical documents.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:19:30] And he's setting as his baseline the hourly rate that he makes at work. Do you think that would be a reasonable place to start as a baseline or do you want to as you know, if you're doing freelancing on the side, you want to price yourself higher than that?

Alison Grade: [00:19:42] Yeah, but it's client and sector specific.

Alison Grade: [00:19:45] It's about that value that you're adding. So if you've got a real depth of tech, if you go back to that I-shaped thing, if you've got a real depth of knowledge, it's understanding the value of that. So if he can communicate that technical knowledge in a way that other people can't, you can really start to leverage that and build on that value. I think the classic question I would be asking is how busy are you if you've got work coming out of your ears, the general rule is you're not charging enough. Because everyone's after you because you're good value. So what happens? Well you put your prices up. OK? So you lose a couple of people along the way, but you're earning more and you're doing less. You're kind of winning. So it goes back to the economics of supply and demand, basically. So you know, it's about when you're starting out, you are going to have a lower rate. But as you start to get busier, that's when you start to put your prices up and you're just balancing that equilibrium. And it's not easy. And it's hard to say no and it's hard to put your prices up. But actually, when you become stupid, busy as when you go, OK, no, you need to check on a few clients or get the prices up.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:20:52] Thank you for that. So is there ever a situation where we should work for free? And if so, how can we flip that to become a positive for us?

Alison Grade: [00:21:00] So I think that's a really interesting question. And I think I always start by asking what's in it for me to do this for nothing? So I would only do something for nothing if it was delivering value for me. So there's different scenarios where I might do that, you know. As an experienced practitioner, I will do work for free rather than, say, give to a local charity. I would rather use some of my expertise to support their activities and give them cash because I feel I can make a better contribution that way. So I might help them with their marketing campaign or something like that. Something practical that I can help them with that has much more value than me writing them a check for fifty dollars or something. So at that point, but those are what I call my hobby clients. Those are people that I deliver my skills to, but I don't have any reason to get any financial reward for them. So that's one way that I will work for free. But the other side of that is either one you're starting out or when your experience, but you're trying to walk in a new sector that's about that portfolio building. But you've got to understand what you're doing or why. And you know, there's a lot of backlash in creative industries about people working for nothing. And you've really got to understand what you're getting out of it, because if you go and you make a film for somebody that's a pitch film, but you can never show on your website, never talk about it or anything else, then really, why are you doing it for free? Why are you getting involved? Because you can't talk about it.

Alison Grade: [00:22:26] You can't show it to anyone. You've got nothing to say for it. And those people are not that well connected. They're not going to introduce you to anyone. So if I was starting out as a filmmaker and someone wanted me to work for nothing, I'd be like, well, OK, what's your track record? Why are you doing projects that are free? Who do you know who's really professionally working in the industry? Who is this, your hobby project? And therefore you can introduce me to some great people. Or are you someone that just takes lots of people for free and then they go and find other people? So you've just got to work out cost benefit analysis of why you would do it for you. But I wouldn't take home work for free without doing that myself or any piece of work. The times when I've broken my own rule, it's always been a pain in the ass because they don't value me. They don't engage with the project properly. You get taken advantage of. So you absolutely got to set it up well.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:23:16] I like that advice. It's really good. That's better than the advice that I've given to my cousin because I told him he was in a situation where people weren't giving him business because he didn't have a portfolio that he could share with them. So the advice I'd give them was, OK, we'll take on one or two projects for free with the caveat that this project, after redacting any confidential information, will be used as part of my portfolio in lieu of payment. However, if you think the work I did was good, then you could pay me at this rate. That's the advice I gave to him, which I think I may have to take back now.

Alison Grade: [00:23:47] So it's all about the portfolio. No, it's absolutely it's about the portfolio. But you've got to know when to stop and you've got to start asking for money if you're delivering for people and leveraging those networks that you've got to get introduced to more work and to more opportunities. So I'm always keen to get new introductions. That's what I'm always looking for as the next lead, the next lead and the next lead to get that paid piece of work.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:24:13] So now that we've established how to find our clients, you know, we do the Three C analysis. We kind of understand how we're going to price ourselves. And now we're in the situation where we've got a set piece of work. And, you know, while we're working with clients, there's inevitably going to be meetings and there's going to be kind of a "fact finding missions".

Harpeet Sahota: [00:24:32] How can we make sure that we're getting the most out of our client meetings?

Alison Grade: [00:24:37] Yeah, that's an interesting question. So certainly in the early days at the start of a project or when you're pitching to a client, you know, you've got to have your pitch ready. You've got to be able to explain why you can add value. What is it that you're going to do? Why should they hire you rather than your direct or indirect competition? And that's all about winning the hearts and minds, why you're the best way you can solve their problem better, faster, whatever it is. It's never cheaper, it's never cheaper. Freelancers are luxury items. We are highly skilled, highly trained people, and we deliver high quality services. So it's never cheaper for me anyway. So but we've also got to know when to shut up and listen and listen to the needs of our clients because I solve customers problems. I don't I don't turn up with a suitcase going here, all my services. Which one would you like? I'm listening. I'm listening for those opportunities. Where can I add value? How can I do my magic? So that's very much what I'm always trying to do, is to listen and really build that relationship with the client. I liken freelancing to dating because it really is those first meetings are like those early dates we are really looking. Do we share each other's values? Do we have stuff in common? Can we work together? All of those things are really building up that relationship, that courtship, you know. I'm really trying to sell them a little something to get started.

Alison Grade: [00:26:01] Let's do a little project together. Let's see if we like working together. And then as I do that little project and I get to know them, I'm like, well, you know, we could do this next. Oh, you know, we could do that next.

Alison Grade: [00:26:10] And I start to build that and I can get around it for a number of years working with the client, different state at different times to suit their workflow. So that's what I was looking to do, is listen to really build a good relationship with that client.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:26:24] And once we've got that relationship built, the client, sometimes we can fall into the trap of over delivering on expectations or maybe not clearly understanding what we need to get done for them. Can you share some pointers on how we can clearly identify the problem that our client is trying to solve so that we don't waste our time delivering on something that is completely not what was expected?

Alison Grade: [00:26:47] Yeah, I that's a really good question, because lots of freelancers think that they're adding value to a client by over delivering, and that's actually part of a USPI.

Alison Grade: [00:26:57] I always do a bit more for my client. They love it. And I'm like, no, no, stop, stop, don't over deliver. I maybe it's because I'm a control freak, but I really believe in the freelancer really owning the project because there's two reasons in my head why a company will hire freelancer. They either hire a freelancer because they've got specialist skills that that company doesn't have in-house and they need. Or they hire a freelancer because they need extra capacity. So if I'm their freelancer and I've got those high skills, my client's not going to be able to write the brief in the proposal because they don't understand what I can deliver. So I need to write that proposal. If I'm adding capacity, the probably got come to me because they haven't got enough time to do it. So they're never going to write the proposal. So I will always own the what is the brief? What is the proposal? I will send that to the client. And that does a couple of things. It allows me to keep control of the conversation, but also it allows me to set out what are the assumptions, what's the work going to be done, when's it going to happen by and all of that and what the deliverables are? So that point and I put a price on it, so my client signs up to that. That's great. OK, so the project changes. Oh, hang on a minute, client. The projects change slightly from this brief that you signed off the I wrote. Do you want me to do this instead of this bit or as well as this. But instead of. OK, so can we just agree that I won't do that bit and it'll be the same price or on top of. Right. Well, I'll quote you for that and it'll be this. So then you're earning the conversation, you've got a clear set of ground rules from the start, so that whole project free project change you can step away from and there's a place to have the conversation.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:28:33] Thank you for that. So where do you see the future of freelancing headed in the next two to five years?

Alison Grade: [00:28:40] I think certainly with where we're at at the moment, with Coronavirus and real uncertainty in the economy, I think we're going to see huge numbers of freelancing opportunities. It's sad to say, but I think that's going to be an awful lot of redundancies coming up because there will be sectors that just aren't in a position to keep going in the same way. And unlike a more traditional recession, it will hit what it will hit an industry or a sector. So people will have to find new ways to redeploy their skills and then other companies will be busy, but they'll be terrified that something's is going to hit again. They'll be hiring freezes, but they'll have busy periods, so they'll need freelancers. So I think the opportunities for freelancers are going to increase massively post Covid just because of the way as the economy opens up again, people will be more risk averse in terms of taking people on. And they'll be a lot of people out there in the marketplace and there won't be as many jobs. So that naturally starts. Well, can I find a little bit of gig work here and that. Can I be a freelancer? Can I be a consultant? So you will be looking for enterprising ways to earn a living that you know, that aren't a sort of especially if they're experienced professionals, they're not going to be looking to do those minimum wage jobs that might be on offer.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:30:03] And how do you think technology will impact freelancers in the next two to five years?

Alison Grade: [00:30:08] Oh, I think it's really exciting because I'm already seeing clients talking to me who would never have approached me in the past. So, you know, in the UK, you know, I do lots of webinars for universities now, whereas before that have always expected me to turn up in-person and they wouldn't have the infrastructure capability. So Plymouth is probably not far in Canadian terms, but it's a long way from Birmingham where I am, you know. It's right down the far south west of the country. I did a webinar with them. I don't think they would have reached out to me and said, Oh, can you come to Plymouth? I'd be like, well, I need to stay in a hotel and da da da. It's going to cost you this. And they're like, can we just buy an hour of your time? I'm like, oh, that's fantastic. And I think I'm going to see way more of that happening, you know, around the world, just like, you know, we're chatting here now. We found a good time that worked for both of us, you know. That side of work's really exciting. So, you know, the client base that I would traditionally look at has completely changed who I'm looking at talking to and who I'm looking at walking with. So that's the real positive. The flip side of that is my competition has completely changed because actually I'm competing with people across the globe as well now. So it massively enhances opportunities, but at the same time does way more people who could be working with the clients that I'm already working with.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:31:20] So as a successful entrepreneur yourself, what do you think are some key traits that you think someone who wants to become a full fledged entrepreneur should be cultivating within themselves?

Alison Grade: [00:31:32] You've got to be self-motivated. You've got to just get out of bed and want to get over that. If you're waiting for someone to tell you what to do, you need to think about how do you change that? Because either it's really not suited to you or what you're looking at doing is just not motivated. You know, you've got to you've got to have fire in the belly for go to want to do it. And you've got you know, I talk in the book about the successful freelancer psyche, and it's this freelancer who sat on top of this three legged stool. And the three legs of the stool are all equal length. And one is about finances and financial drive. And one leg is about your skills and one likes about your desires. And you've got to have those three legs bearing equal weight, because if you take away financial drive from that model, you've got skills, you've got desires, but you've got a hobby. You haven't got a career. You have you're not going to pay the mortgage. You're not going to pay the bills. If you take away skills, you've got no substance behind what you do. And if you take away desires, you're just not able to do the marketing and communicate it. You're sitting there with like, well, I want to earn the money and I've got the skills, but you're just not able to communicate it. So I think whether it's an entrepreneur, whether it's a freelancer, those three of the absolute pillars in the building blocks of driving that forwards. But you've just got to be someone who get get on with it.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:32:56] What's up, artists? Be sure to join the Free Open Mastermind slack community by going to bitly.com/artistsofdatascience. It's a great environment for us to talk all things Data science, to learn together, to grow together. And I'll also keep you updated on the open biweekly office hours. I'll be hosting for a community. Check out the show on Instagram at @TheArtistsOfDataScience. Follow us on Twitter at @ArtistsOfData. Look forward to seeing you all there.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:33:26] So is there a difference between freelancing and entrepreneurship, or can those terms be used a bit interchangeably?

Alison Grade: [00:33:33] People do use them interchangeably. I think for me, a freelancer is somebody who sells their services as a freelancers, aren't looking to grow, to hire lots of people to get investment.

Alison Grade: [00:33:43] It's about selling your services and it's about the autonomy and the work life balance being valued at what you do, loving all your projects. An entrepreneur is much more around: I want to build a business. I want to sell products. I might want to get investment. I want to build a team. So entrepreneurs are much more focused on that scaling up side of things, I think. I mean, that's the difference I see. And freelancers can start as freelance, and go actually I've got a business and I'm going to scale it. And but really, freelancers for me are people who sell their services to other companies rather than your designer maker who's got an Etsy shop and a selling product. See that more as an entrepreneur, as a business.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:34:27] So you mentioned some of the similarities between freelancers and entrepreneurs. You talk about in your book as well, that three elements of the successful freelancers like you mentioned there, like three legs of the stool.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:34:38] But what would you say is the difference between the freelancer mindset and the entrepreneur mindset, having been on both kind of sides of the field?

Alison Grade: [00:34:45] I think it's the growth and the entrepreneur is always on building that team, scaling that business, taking it to that next stage. There's a there's a big hurry around that. The freelancer side of things for me is it is about flexibility, autonomy and freedom. It's about work life balance. The entrepreneur for me, as someone who's got their head down, that absolutely on a mission to make that thing happen. It's not that I don't do that as a freelancer, but I'm not trying to grow and scale a business. I'm not trying to build a team. I'm trying to pay my bills for me and work how I want to work. So I think that's the difference for me and that sort of mindset. But, you know, it is a bit blurrier, I think, particularly freelancers selling services and quite often entrepreneurs build businesses that sell products. So for me, freelancers very much sell some sell their services.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:35:41] Thank you so much for that. I really enjoyed that kind of compare and contrast it for us. So you talk about building a personal brand in your book, which I keep proponent of. I think that's awesome. I think everybody should build a personal brand.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:35:51] But what's the importance of building a personal brand as a freelancer? And how can someone build a personal brand for themselves?

Alison Grade: [00:35:59] I think you have to take a step back and think about how we relate to brands as consumers, because we're all really, really sophisticated consumers of brands. You know, we can go down the high street, we can go on the Internet. We've got we've got opinions about every brand that we've ever come into contact with. We love it. We hate it. It's good value. It's high quality, is beautiful. It's functional. You can come up with any objective you can think of to describe different brands and how you feel about them. So, you know, as a consumer, I'm extremely sophisticated at forming very quick opinions on brands. So I have to remember that as a freelancer, because I'm setting out that I'm selling, setting out my store to sell my services and people will see me as a brand and they will judge me in the same way that I judge all the brands that I do in everyday life. So that's why that brand is so important. I think as a freelancer, there's kind of three key parts to it. I've got to look at what are the values that I admire in the brands that I like and what we'll values. Do I admire brands so I can start to look at those kind of words? That's that's what I like. I can start to think about, well, what are the values that are important to me as a human being? And then I can look at, well, what are the values that I think a professional freelancer should adopt? And from that I can get a whole list of different brand values and I try and drill those down to about half a dozen core brand value words that really say what I'm all about as a brand.

Alison Grade: [00:37:25] And from what I can then start to distill very consistent messaging across my social media, across my website, across my proposals, my presentations, all of my client interactions, and then be focused around those half a dozen core brand value words. But people will see us as brands. So let's understand that, embrace that and use that to our advantage to present ourselves to the world.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:37:50] So speaking of social media and presenting ourselves to the world, we'll talk to us a bit about Dunbar's number and how that plays into being a freelancer.

Alison Grade: [00:37:58] Yeah, so Robert Dunbar's an anthropologist. And he proposes that most of us can maintain around a hundred and fifty people in all networks who and he says that we would recognize instantly in any situation. And if we bumped into them in a ball, it would be no problem just to sit down unannounced and have a chat. So if I've got one hundred and fifty people in my network and you've got one hundred fifty people in your network. That means that one step removed, that's twenty two thousand five hundred people in my network, so all of my one hundred and fifty and all of that one hundred fifty, one hundred four hundred twenty two thousand five hundred people, though, I'm one step removed from. So what I'm thinking about my networks, I'm realizing that I can actually reach out very quickly to a really large number of people if I start to think about them as, you know, not everybody is going to be somebody who can offer me what directly. But you might have a local university by you that, you know, would be brilliant. Alison's great guest on the podcast, you know, tonight.

Alison Grade: [00:38:57] We ought to get university and I'll do my talk about how to be a great freelancer. So I'm leveraging my network. Who do you know? So how does that work? So you can introduce me to people. And so it goes on so that they then I meet them. We have a conversation. I do a great thing. And they say, oh, you should go outside. So suddenly my network's growing, but I've actually got to, you know, I've got to take the time to sit down and write down that list of who are these hundred and fifty people on there. And my phone numbers contact list are on my Facebook. The remaining ten they're on my Instagram can pull that list together. I got to write to them and say, hey, can we have a conversation? We know each other. I'm doing this. People are buying me because of this. Who do you think might be interested? And if they're good close colleagues, friends, they'll have that conversation with you and then you get a lead and then you get a lead and you just keep following it up.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:39:43] So I really like that response. That's very insightful. And I want to kind of think about how we can leverage networking events. So networking events are a huge part of a data scientist as they're starting out their career. You know, there's career fairs that they go to on university campuses. They're recruiting events that they go to. And I think some of the things you talk about in your book about how we can leverage networking events to our advantages will really apply to this group of people. My audience, how can you do that?

Harpeet Sahota: [00:40:10] How can we leverage networking events without coming off as here's my résumé, please hire me.

Alison Grade: [00:40:14] Yeah, that's a very good question. I think I'm pleased you framed that with people starting out because I think there's different approaches at different stages in your career. I think when you're starting out, you need to do lots and lots of research before the event. Who's signed up to it? Who can who signed up to it, what to do about it? Because networking events fall into two parts. You've got the contacts like a conference. There's the meeting conference, the conversation piece, and then there's the bits in between.

Alison Grade: [00:40:40] If you're starting out, one of the great things to do is get involved with being an organizer if you're trying to get in there, particularly if it might cost you to go to the event. If you can volunteer and do the registration desk, you got to meet everybody. You got to give them the badges. You've got to say, hey, welcome. Thank you very much. Of what? It's somebody who you've identified that you really, really want to talk to. You go, Oh, I'm so pleased you're here. Could I have five minutes later on? Could I come find you later on? I've got a question I'd really like to ask you. I love your work, whatever it might be. Obviously, you can't stop being on the registration desk and kind of pitch to them. But, you know, getting on the registration desk, that starts getting in that what's getting, you know, who's who. So that's a really good start. But then when you're in the panel in the Conference, you know, of purpose and questions that you want to ask, stand up, ask those questions, say who you are, say, while you get on the mike and raise your profile. Because actually, if you're starting out and you ask a good question, you will be like, wow, who's that person? That was a really cool question. And then, you know, when you go into the breaks, people will be like, hey, that was a good question or whatever you or you can go out to a group of people and sort of, you know, may I join you? May I join you? It's really powerful statement.

Alison Grade: [00:41:50] Just go up to the people. It always looks like everybody knows everybody. But most of the time we're all hiding next to the person that we've just happened to get a cup of tea, whether we're chatting to him because we're really can't. We just got to steel ourselves to go and talk to lots of people. So may I join you? Join the conversation. And we've just stood up and asked the question and they've been in the section. They'll be like, hey, that was a good question. What motivated you or what did you think of so-and-so's response? So you've already got the conversation going, but, you know, you've just got to work through, get into the conversation, ascertain who you're talking to? Have you got a point of time? You go to a point where there's something mutually interesting to talk about. If not, get out of the conversation as quickly as you can move on to the next group of people. Oh, sorry, my phone's going. Oh, so I've got to go now. Whatever. Could I have called his car? Off you go. But it's all conferences and networking events.

Alison Grade: [00:42:37] The numbers guy, do your research, find the people you want to talk to, but you've got to talk to lots and lots of people and then you've got to follow up with them afterwards and have something interesting to say.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:42:47] Thank you for that. I know that our audience is really going to benefit from that. I wonder if you'd speak to your experience being a woman entrepreneur and freelancer and if you have any words of encouragement for the women in our audience who are breaking into or are currently in this world that you that you talk about in Freelance Bible?

Alison Grade: [00:43:07] Yeah, I know that question. I do. I looked at it when you sent the thing over. And I what I do resonate with it, but I don't because I just get on and I do my thing. And I guess the best place for me to talk to that from is when I was running Girls Angels because I was a woman running a motorbike training school.

Alison Grade: [00:43:22] And I can imagine, like women and Data science is probably not huge numbers, so, you know, you can actually create quite a profile of a brand quite well if you market yourself cleverly. So when we were Girls Angels, I don't know if it's the same. I'm sure it's relatively similar. But when you do motorbike training everyone's going to wear the fluorescent bib over their clothes so you can see that they're having a lesson and it's going to have the company's phone number on and this sort of thing. So the tradition in the U.K. is that everyone was these bright yellow ones and all branding was all pink because we were girls, angels and everything. So I asked if I asked the authorities of all I was allowed to wear fluorescent pink ones and they couldn't come up with a reason not to because they were fluorescent, which was the rules and reflective and everything else. So suddenly we appeared on the scene. Do you know we were really bold and really loud and we were bright pink. So everyone knew that it was all company.

Alison Grade: [00:44:12] So I think that sort of things of owning it and being just even if you're not feeling confident inside, you know, owning it in the moment and really going for it and holding your own is really important. Do you know we've all gone into the bathroom and gone, oh, my God, what's going on? I'm sure you guys don't you just don't talk about it differently, but you know, you've got to hold it together and you know, and what you can do and challenge and you know, don't let the mansplaining take over the people that I was wondering.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:44:43] Actually, just one last formal question before I jump into the lightning round. And that is what's the one thing you want people to learn from your story?

Alison Grade: [00:44:51] For me, I really believe freelancing is something that everybody can do.

Alison Grade: [00:44:55] It's not just something that you do because you're between jobs. It's a valuable and empowering way of having a career and running your life, whether that's family traveling, whatever you choose it to be. So my book is all about empowering people and inspiring them to take that step and giving them the tools to achieve it. So I believe that everyone can be a great freelancer. You just need to have the tools. And I believe I've written those down so you can do that yourself.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:45:27] And I definitely agree with that and encourage everyone to check out your book. We'll have it link to the show. Notes was really insightful and really does. It's the blueprint, for lack of a better word. It is the blueprint.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:45:39] So jumping into quick lightning round here, you could put up a billboard anywhere in the world. What would it say and why?

Alison Grade: [00:45:46] Ok, my billboard would say make work work for you, because I think that's at the heart of freelancing. Saying I make my work, work for me. You know, what you don't know is that five minutes before I sign up for the podcast, I was downstairs helping my son ice the cake for his school art project because obviously the kids are at home at the moment. But I'm rushing up and down the stairs between Zoom's and Googling and everything else, and I'm making up work for me at the moment in different ways.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:46:16] What's something you believe that other people think is crazy?

Alison Grade: [00:46:21] Ok, so I just think you have to get things done straightaway. Like someone asks you to so something, right I'll do it now. I think other people think I'm mad and I'm like hyperactive because people go, oh yeah, I'll do that. And then I look at like three hours later they say, I haven't done it. But what you said you were going to do it. Why haven't you done it yet out? I would have done it hours ago. That that's one.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:46:40] So what's the most bizarre aspect or quality of human nature?

Alison Grade: [00:46:45] Yeah, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this one because I wanted to get something that was really true to me. And I think it was like a cognitive distortions that we construct our reality and write our own narrative. We really selectively interpret a process information according to our own core beliefs and perceptions. And I'm sure that's something that you look at a lot and Data science. But it's just like, you know, why is it that we just construct these narratives and stories around us that are debilitating? They take us backwards, they harm our prospects, we calling on them. So I think that for me is really bizarre.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:47:24] So what's an academic topic or area of research outside of Data science that you think Data scientists should spend some time researching up on?

Alison Grade: [00:47:34] So it has to be marketing and communications to me every time because you can have the best thing that you do. And the entire world would be absolutely brilliant if you can't communicate to somebody why they should care about it, why they need it, why they should value it, you're just not going to get it over the line.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:47:51] So absolutely like what's the number one book, fiction, nonfiction or both that you would recommend our audience read and your most impactful takeaway from it?

Alison Grade: [00:48:00] Ok, so I read that as a factual but notes that I made on that well, from my early days when I started out with Girls Angels, it was absolutely the banner entrepreneur written by my mentor Mike Sullivan, which was all about just getting on with that beta testing things, trying things out, and was before you really called it called a beta testing. But it's like, let's see how we can do this really quickly, test it out, and build it up from there. Rather than like, oh, I need to build this big thing I need this investment so absolute [inaudible] entrepreneur that really helped shape me. Get Girls Angels on the way. Recently, I love Start With Why by Simon Sinek because I am absolutely a why, why, why person. I just finished Positive Intelligence, which is all about those cognitive distortions, that kind of thing, and that's been really insightful. But I'm also a great lover of fiction and I've just devoured the normal people and the one that came before that, which has been a big TV show in the UK on BBC. I don't know if it's if it's hit your screens yet, but it was really an all about well, it's called normal people, but it's all quite dysfunctional relationships. It's kids growing up in Ireland and going to university and they're both fishes out of water at different stages in their career. But they have this relationship and it's not normal. It's fascinating. So it's all that psychology stuff that I love.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:49:19] So maybe I'll definitely add those two shows. And I'm a huge Simon Sinek fan. Start with what is an amazing book, just the last as well. And yeah, huge fan of him. So critical in that one.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:49:29] So if you could somehow get a magic telephone that allowed us to contact 20 year old Alison, what would you tell her?

Alison Grade: [00:49:35] Yeah. Now, that took me it took me some thinking and I realized it was the 20 year old me was an even more of a hurry than the house. And now I think I was quite like a bull in a china shop and a lot of my productions. I was just so ready to get going a rush ahead that I didn't take the time to build the relationships and get the point that you need to take things off, get things off the ground. So I think I would go back and be like, OK, you don't have to do it quite so quickly. Get become friends with the team, get on with people, get it going. It's not just like you need to do the walk at one hundred miles an hour. So I think that for me it's just slow down a bit.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:50:16] What's the best advice you have ever received?

Alison Grade: [00:50:19] So it goes back to the place that I was at when I was like 20 year old me. I was a little bit older than 20 because I'd graduated from uni. But my old boss, mentor Ivor Rundell, who gave me one of my first big opportunities in TV production, it was ambulance chasing, it was losing TEUs. It was the fast of Real Fly on the Wall documentary series. I was way before we had iPhones. We had like great big video recorders that we were trying to hide in police cars and on stretchers and all this kind of stuff. And what he hired me for the job he was going to be he'd seen that I was hungry. As I've said, I'm in a hurry and ready to go. And he saw some fire in the belly. It was like, right, you'll be great and I'm going to really train you and mentor you. And I'm going to be right there for you every step of the way. But I'm going to let you step up into this big role.And this was just before Christmas, right? And over the Christmas right end of the production company resigned. He moved on and on them, became the MD of the company.

Alison Grade: [00:51:11] So he called me in on the first day and said, OK, so it's all changed a bit. You still got the job. Don't worry about that. I've been booted upstairs, so I'm not going to be able to be as hands on as I was planning to be. But you've got to promise me one thing. If something goes wrong and you need to come in and tell me that it's gone wrong, I'm not going to give you a bollocking. But I need to know that it's gone wrong because the only thing that can happen if you don't tell me is it's going to get worse. And I've always taken that to heart, in terms of I've always gone to people when things have gone wrong, I've owned up to it. And I like to think that as a leader, as a freelancer, when I run teams that I'm open to, that I don't shout and scream. It's like, OK, how are we going to deal with it? Let's get it sorted down. We'll do what the inquest said. For me, that was really good advice.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:51:58] I like that advice as well. Just own up to the mistake, bring it to the surface and solve it. Get on with it way. Better idea than hiding it.

Alison Grade: [00:52:05] Sorry, I know that the companies that I want to why something has gone wrong and I've just got to. That's what I do. And then I got a huge bollocking and I'm like, OK, you know, actually I don't need this, you know, that's how you're going to do that. That's not an environment that I want to walk in. So I'm really clear, actually, you know, I don't want to walk in that way. Because you don't think in the same way that I do, I've just put my cards on the table. I've got OK, went wrong. Things go wrong.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:52:31] Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie, those happy environments where you do get a bargain, get where it's like this person needs to read them. Simon Sinek. So what motivates you.

Alison Grade: [00:52:41] I, I just love putting people and ideas together and making things happen.

Alison Grade: [00:52:45] You know, you said in the introduction it's very much who I am. I transform creative ideas into reality and it's putting that puzzle together, getting the right people, putting the project together, just making things happen, doing deals. That's what I get up at 4:00.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:52:59] So what song do you have on repeat right now?

Alison Grade: [00:53:02] I have Elton John. I'm still standing on repeat what is no on my iTunes. It's my eight year old son who's playing it the whole time on the piano.

Alison Grade: [00:53:10] It's an interesting interpretation because he plays the really fast and the bits he doesn't know quite so well, a bit slower. But yeah, it's Elton John. I'm still standing. That's my why. Well, I think it's a great song for where we're. A moment with crowbars, because I have just about spills.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:53:27] Yeah, it's definitely true. So where can people find your book?

Alison Grade: [00:53:31] So it's on Amazon, it's paperback. It's on Kindle. It's also on as an audio book.

Alison Grade: [00:53:37] I know it's on Audible. I'm not very good with the other audio, but platforms, but I'm pretty sure it's across most of them. And I got the opportunity to read it, which was really exciting. Took me way beyond my comfort zone. Even as an author. I'm like, you know, I like to be the producer. Behind the scenes told me I was the artist or the client, but I'm really proud to have done that. It was really good fun.

Alison Grade: [00:53:57] So I'm curious, what is that process like? Are you just kind of reading from a teleprompter or how are you reading the book when you're doing it?

Alison Grade: [00:54:04] So I was sitting in a little sound booth with a guy through a glass window with with the recording equipment I chose to do on paper. You can do it on my iPad or paper, but it's not teleprompter. But literally, I got some really good notes from Penguin who were fabulous. And, you know, it really was you've got to read this out loud as practiced. So I literally the weirdest bit was the part where I literally sat in my office. I read it out loud to myself to just get into the feel. And the flavor of the book is, is me. It's my tone of voice.

Alison Grade: [00:54:36] And it was really so when I was told they wanted to make it into an audio book, it was really important that I put myself forward because I know it's me that comes across on the page. And I felt that I wanted to have a chance to try and show that I could read me rather than somebody else. And I needed that whole process of reading it out loud to work out how I was going to read it, how it was going to say. I took some voice coaching from a friend of mine who's a voice artist who kind of helped me with a bat and stuff. But you just get into the flow. And the opening was the hardest bit because actually the openings, the bed, it's been really crafted because, you know, you go to book. So you buy a book, you read the first two pages. So that was almost like let me in some ways, because it had been really carefully worked on to really draw people and get the right messaging across. So actually those first couple of pages were the hardest bits to read. And then when I got into the flow and the longer form, if you like, than, you know, it was me, it was just it was it was exhausting, but it was lovely and great fun and it was a great honor to have that opportunity.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:55:38] Thank you so much for sharing that experience. I've always wondered what it was like to record your audio as an avid audiobook listener, so thank you for sharing that.

Alison Grade: [00:55:45] So how can audio books that are read by new authors versus the ones read by actors? Because I think I do, yeah.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:55:53] I find it more personal when the actual author reads their book because they're reading it the way they intended it to be heard and the message is being delivered in the way they want it to have it delivered. So yeah, I definitely prefer when the author reads it.

Alison Grade: [00:56:08] Yeah. No, I like to ask people because I feel that lot like table. I don't know those being really selfish.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:56:14] You had good reasoning there. So how can people connect with you. Where could they find you online.

Alison Grade: [00:56:20] Cool. So I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn at Alison Grade. I'm on Facebook and Instagram at freelance bible. I love my website. AlisonGrade.Com. You can pass me a message there, all the social media links are there and you can buy the book, too.

Harpeet Sahota: [00:56:35] Alison, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here today. I really, really appreciate you coming on to the show and sharing all this wonderful information and wisdom with us. Thank you so much.

Alison Grade: [00:56:46] Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. It's lovely to meet you and thank you for having me on the show.