The My Journey Podcast

For what will be the final episode of The My Journey Podcast for 2020, Tom and I try to round up the year.

We each share one thing we've learnt, one thing we've achieved and what we're planning for 2021.

Before we sign off for the year, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has listened to the podcast this year! With hit some incredible highs and hit milestones we could have never have imagined earlier this year. So thank you to you the listeners for this.

Whilst we're not recording over the festive period, I would still love to hear from you all, so please do get in touch!

A quick update.

This last couple of weeks, I've been back to being properly "freelancer" busy. Evenings and weekends have been predominantly taken over by work... and I kind of like it!

Now don't get me wrong, I've been through most of lockdown, but these last couple of weeks have been a step up in gears. 

So this week, on The My Journey Podcast, I thought I'd talk you through what I've been up to this last week or so. I mean, this is the place where I document my freelance journey after all.

Would love to know whether or not you enjoyed this?

In this episode of The My Journey Podcast, we try something a little bit different. We can't really ignore the elephant in the room (LOCKDOWN), so we try to give an alternative take on current events.

We each bring to the table two trends that have emerged during the pandemic and discuss whether we're fans of them as well as whether we think they're here to stay or we'll return to pre-COVID norms.

In the last episode of The My Journey Podcast, you might have heard me say I was going to cover top tips for how you should approach social media during lockdown. Unfortunately, that wasn't included in that recording, but it is today.

Episode 42 carries on last weeks lockdown theme but this time I'm specifically focusing on businesses and their use of social media. Listen to find out my three top tips for dealing with lockdown as a business on social media.

As we enter a second national lockdown, Tom and I look at how we'll be approaching the next 4 weeks. How does it differ for the two of us? One of us is an employee-facing furlough for a second time and the other a freelancer looking to grow his business.

Was there anything to be learnt from Lockdown 1.0 that we can use to our advantage this time around? Will we be goal setting or just taking it as it comes?

Hear our honest and personal insight in this, the latest episode of The My Journey Podcast.

To celebrate Episode 40 of The My Journey Podcast, I decided to take a look back over my two and a half year freelance career and share the top 3 lessons I've learnt along the way.

There's plenty of small things such as the importance of your self-assessment, buying a domain etc. that I've parked to one side. These are the more general, culture-side of things I wished I'd known and appreciated from the beginning.

So far, they've not had the best reception, but Stories are the newest talking point on LinkedIn.

Some people feel it's another step towards LinkedIn turning into Facebook. Others just don't feel the feature is up to scratch.

Comparisons are always going to be made with Instagram, but in this episode of The My Journey Podcast, I try to reason why they might not be so bad after all by focusing in on LinkedIn and the mistakes people are making when they criticise the feature.

As ever, I try to remain balanced, so I brought along some stats to help argue both sides of the debate. 

It's probably one of the toughest aspects of getting started when you begin your self-employed journey. And one that can potentially make or break your business.

But how do you price your services?

Well, to be totally honest, I'm not 100% sure what the best way is. But here's my take on it.

I look back over my past mistakes, examine where I am now and talk about where I want to be with my pricing structure in the future.

It's a long one! But that's because this is PACKED full of value.

We kick thing off with our usual catch-up before diving into this weeks topic, "Leaders". We discuss what attributes and personality traits make a good leader, the role the people being led play and our experiences of good and bad leaders.

After all of that, we then share a few learnings from our relatively new YouTube careers, before revealing our latest challenge!

In episode 32, I spoke about why I chose to be a freelancer, but in this episode, I delve a bit deeper and explain why I chose to specialise in social media as opposed to any other area of marketing.

Looking back at when I first started, I believe there were two main reasons I chose social media as my specialism, both are which are probably still relevant to people starting out down the same track today.

As we hit the milestone of 35 episodes of The My Journey Podcast, Tom and I try out a new idea for the main section of the pod.

If you're a regular listener, you might remember us mentioning that we wanted to try out debating topics instead of just a general discussion. Well, here it is!

The topic is networking events and one of us will be assigned For and the other Against. But who will you side with?

I've previously shared the story of how I attracted my first ever client as a freelance marketer. This time around, I jump to the present day.

Over the last month or so, I've continued to grow my business, receiving more enquiries than ever before. But how do I get these leads? Well, I've spotted three common trends which I share with you in this episode.

If you're new to the freelance life, let me know how you plan to build your customer list. If you've been in the game a while, which method do you find most effective?

Thanks for picking The My Journey Podcast! This time, Tom and I discuss our recent trading challenge. Each of us picks one thing we learnt, one thing we loved and one piece of advice to share with you guys. And, most importantly, reveal who is the better trader.

When most people leave university, they take up a junior position at a firm and set out trying to work their way up the career ladder to where they want to be.

Not me.

I decided to go it alone and become a freelancer.

Some may see this as a crazy decision. But here's the story behind how and why I went that route.

Self-confidence, self-belief, being yourself... whatever you call it, it's something many people struggle with. In this episode of The My Journey Podcast, Tom and I explore how our self-confidence has developed over time and how we believe we've been able to build our self-belief. Unlike other episodes, we struggled to nail a succinct set of top tips and instead chatted around our experiences hoping, you the listener could take something away.

This is one of our most open and honest episodes to date and one I thoroughly enjoyed recording.

Ever wondered how to get your first client as a freelancer?

In this episode of The My Journey Podcast, I dive into the unusual story of how I secured my first client.

• Paid ads?
• Networking events?
• Cold emailing?

None of the above.  This is a story which includes Hull Pride, a Gin Distillery and a chance encounter. 

As The My Journey Podcast hits the 30 episode milestone, I'm introducing a new strand of content. I'm deep-diving into topics specific to my journey and key moments in my career to provide more context for anyone else looking to start their own freelance career.  If you'd like me to cover anything specific, drop me a message on social media.

In Episode 29 of The My Journey Podcast, we hear about Tom's return to work and my new found love for Sports Cards before randomly generating this week's topic, work-life balance.

We chat through how we feel about work-life balance, how we've managed it during 2020 and settle upon 3 top tips for anyone else who is looking to get on top of their work-life balance.

Welcome to all our new listeners!

After a crazy couple of weeks which saw the podcast climb to the number 77 spot on Apple Podcasts, we're back with the long-list and random number generator. And this time, it's thrown us "presenting" as a topic. We discuss our different views on presenting, how it makes us feel and what techniques I've used to get myself to a place where I'm very rarely phased by the prospect of standing up in front of people and sharing my thoughts.

Episode 27 sees our first interview since the change in format. This time, I sit down (virtually) with Peter Andrews, Head of Marketing & Business Strategy Subject Group and Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull. He's also my old lecturer.

We chat through how the university prepares marketing students for life in the real world, whether a university education is the right route for entrepreneurs and the latest marketing trends businesses should be aware of.

I've delivered a number of workshops in different settings helping people build their personal brand. Whether you're a student, employee or business owner, there are some key questions you need to be asking yourself in order to build a successful personal brand. In this episode, we run through these questions and provide some top tips.

If you'd like to download a worksheet to help you through this process, visit the link below.

As I come to the end of a busy couple of weeks, me and Tom dial in for a catch-up and to discuss this week's randomly selected topic which was plans for the future. 

One of the weirdest things I found about coming out of the education system was there was no next step. There was no cut-off. No moment you are forced to make a decision about your future. It takes motivation from within and discipline to stick to those decisions. Tom and I have set off on different feet with myself going down an entrepreneurial route and Tom into a series of apprenticeships in order to discover his passion. But it's interesting to hear about how similar our plans for the future look.

This is certainly one of those episodes we'll have to revisit in years to come.

In this episode of The My Journey Podcast, we discuss how we organise our work life and manage our time. The focus was on prioritisation and to-do lists. This opened up some interesting conversation about how we manage short term tasks against long term projects and whether or not we're like this in our personal lives too. 

If you enjoy this episode, please pass the pod onto someone else who you think will enjoy listening too. Also, if you could leave a review, that would be fantastic!

Are you producing the best type of social media content? In Episode 23 of The My Journey Podcast, we discuss some social media content best practice, the types of content that get the highest levels of engagement and whether or not #hashtags are still relevant in 2020.

If you're looking for some social media pointers, then this is the episode for you!

As ever, if you enjoy the podcast, make sure to follow on whichever platform you listen, leave a review if you'd be so kind and share it with a friend.

This week's randomly generated topic is Best Jobs!

Tom chats about the time he has spent at Camp in America and the transferable skills he gained during this time. Now working in accountancy, these two worlds seem miles apart, but he believes his experience at Camp set him in good stead for his current role.

As much as I love my current role, I picked out my time at Hull 2017 as my favourite job. I firmly believe that the responsibilities and opportunities I was given during my time as part of the City of Culture team far surpassed those any of my peers had on their placement years.

To hear more about our favourite jobs (so far), what we've been up to over the last couple of weeks and this episode's Plug, Share and Ask, make sure to listen to the full episode.

Episode 21 of The My Journey Podcast sees our first *announcement special*! To be one of the first people to hear about my new project, Social Media Club, make sure to listen until the end of this episode.

Before we discuss Social Media Club, we catch-up on how lockdown is treating both us and randomly select another topic from the long-list. This week, the random number generator selected Personal Development. Tom and I discuss how we approach personal development and techniques that have helped us to be effective when it comes to this topic. As we mention on the pod, we'd love to hear how you approach your own personal development. So if you have any advice, get in touch!

Another milestone for The My Journey Podcast - EPISODE 20! This time around, we have decided to add some extra structure to the podcast. During the introduction, we chat about my Instagram Live experience and why I've been updating my website as well as Tom's recent appearance in a local publication where he was picked out as a Rising Star.

From now on, in the main part of the podcast, we'll be randomly selecting a business-related topic to discuss. If you would like to add a topic or a question to the long-list, get in touch! This week's randomly selected topic was 'How To Start As A Freelancer'. Therefore, I shared my top tips, learnings and advice based on my experience of setting up as a freelancer, prompted by questions from Tom.

To round off the episode, we played another game of quick-fire questions. This time, we cover our favourite board games, next purchase and more!

Episode 19 of The My Journey Podcast marks our first foray into remote podcasting has its challenges.

We start by discussing how the current advice regarding Coronavirus is affecting our working lives, touching upon the longer-lasting changes we feel this will force.

We then move onto the focus of this podcast, my top tips for social media during these uncertain times. Some of these apply during normal circumstances, by I explain why these are more important than ever.

To finish off, we do a PSA, Plug, Share, Ask. So, make sure to get involved with that!

In this short episode of The My Journey Podcast, I'm back to being on my own as both Tom and I practice social distancing as a result of Coronavirus. This time, I provide an update on what I've been up to including the effect Coronavirus is having on my business. I then also impart my wisdom of how to work from home given my previous experience. As much as us freelancers have been mocked about our work from home lifestyle in the past, we've learnt how to deal with the potential pitfalls of a home office.

In this episode, we hear about Tom's recent exam success which leads to a discussion about how routines can affect mindset and productivity. We then move onto myth-busting the idea that social media is expensive following a point that came up at the FSB Small Business Day. Within this, we look at the hard facts and figures around the costs of social media and explore why people might believe the myth. We then take a side-step into my view on how marketers should be approaching Coronavirus, before finishing with "quick" quiz to find out more about each other.

This time, Tom is back! We start off by discussing my crazy day before moving on to the wider topic of public speaking and delivering talks and workshops. Find out whether this is something myself and Tom enjoy or fear. The conversation then moves on to my favourite topic... podcasts. As an organiser of the first-ever Northern Podcast festival, I provide an update on its progress to date ahead of a big planning meeting the following day.