"I want to create products that actually prevent people from taking advantage of freelancers. I want them to realize that they cannot take advantage of us easily because we are coming for them."

You've likely heard the phrase "hope for the best, prepare for the worst," but are you truly prepared for the worst-case scenarios that could derail your creative business?~ 

In this eye-opening episode, host Radim Malinic sits down with Ashley Baxter, the founder of WithJack, an insurance company tailored specifically for freelancers and small creative businesses. Ashley shares her journey from wedding photographer to indispensable insurance broker, shedding light on the often-overlooked importance of protecting your creative endeavors.

If you've ever dismissed insurance as an unnecessary expense or assumed that your contract alone would safeguard you, this conversation will make you think twice. 

Ashley and Radim delve into the real-world scenarios where insurance can mean the difference between a costly mistake and a protected business. From late payments to scope creep and client disputes, they explore the common pitfalls that creative professionals face and how insurance can provide a safety net.

Key Takeaways:

• Freelancers often underestimate the value of insurance, assuming they'll never need to make a claim, but having coverage can change how you communicate with clients and give you the confidence to stand up for yourself.
• Contracts alone won't protect you; insurance is crucial for handling situations where clients perceive mistakes or threaten legal action.
• Late payments are a chronic issue for creatives, and insurance products like debt recovery services can help you recoup unpaid invoices without the hassle of legal proceedings.
• Scope creep and misunderstandings are common sources of client disputes, which is why professional indemnity insurance is essential for covering the costs of such claims.
• As your creative business grows, larger clients and platforms may require you to have insurance, making it a necessary step towards landing bigger opportunities.

Creativity For Sale: How to start and grow a life-changing creative career and business by Radim Malinic - Out now.

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it's okay to make those mistakes. They might be expensive mistakes, but the good thing is you'll probably just make them once, like you adapted and tweaked things going forward. So I think if anybody's listening and they're maybe thinking, Oh, no, I'm doing things a bit wrong, or you're going to change in a titty on your business as you, grow and become more mature. So it's okay to make mistakes, but hopefully you learn from them and put measures in place to prevent them from happening again.

Hello and welcome to Creativity for Sale podcast, a show to help you start and grow your life changing creative career and business. My name is Radim Malinich and creativity changed my life. You see, I believe creativity can change your life too. I even wrote a book about it and it inspired this podcast. I've set out to interview the world's most brilliant creatives, designers, writers, musicians, makers and marketeers about their life changing experiences with creativity. If you ever wanted to know how people go from their humble beginnings to the pinnacle of their success, our conversation should provide you with an intimate look into the triumphs, challenges and untold stories behind their creative endeavours. We also discuss the highs and lows of creative careers and creative life. So, thank you for joining me on this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all. Let creativity change your life. Are you ready? today's guest has become the go to insurance broker for many freelancers and small creative businesses. She's been providing necessary products and insurance packages and even education for those who don't often seem to think about possibilities of what might go wrong sooner rather than later. It doesn't matter what your creative pursuit or title is, I'm sure you will find our conversation very useful indeed. A former wedding photographer turned into an indispensable insurance broker. It's my pleasure to introduce Ashley Baxter. Hi Ashley! How are you doing?

I'm great. It's so good to see you. How are you doing?

I'm delighted to have you on the show. You're my, uh, I believe my second Scottish guest, obviously after the trademark Craig Black, who's been flying the creative Scottish flag pretty much everywhere all the time, which was quite rightfully So it's nice to have you on the show and I'm sorry you've been booked second.

No, that's fine. I mean, I can imagine the conversation with Craig was very interesting. He's so talented.

Craig lives and breathes what he does. he's literally a poster boy for creativity and business and manifestation. But, yeah, enough about Craig. How are you doing? It's nice to have you here.

Yes, it's good to be here. you and I have met in person a couple of times, but it's been a while. Definitely pre Covid, wasn't it?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I believe I might have met you. I I can't remember where. I think I saw you once in Scotland, in Aberdeen,

Yeah, so that was at the Meet Conf, wasn't it?

the a shout out to Cameron Duthie.

I loved that conference.

that was amazing. It's such a shame

was so it was so good.

They couldn't do it again because there was so much money and because it's such a, yeah, it's a tricky subject

it feels like we, I know, but I know, but it feels like we never get conferences like that in Scotland. So I don't know if that contributed to my personal enjoyment of that event, but I just loved the whole experience. It was a really good vibe, good people, great talks. So that's where I first met you. And then the second time was when I was doing a talk in London. What was that called again? design the business.

I think design and

Yeah, Um, and that probably was about 2018. So yeah, it's been a while.

yeah, I remember that was such an interesting setting and it's always requires someone's initiative. And then a lot of work to actually make it, happen, just because those things just don't happen easy, just nothing that we see everything that the shiny outcome, of what's happening. And then, that it's like, as someone said, it's like a swan, it looks so serene on the water, but it paddles manically under the water to stay afloat, you know, just to move about.

I know. Are you talking about the process of putting on events like that?

Yeah.

it's not for me. I've never done it before and I just don't think I have the organizational skills to do it. You would be good at it, seeing as you know so many people.

I think I'll stick to the podcast. I mean, I just literally I have like an hour a day to do this and then I just I'm paddling under the water, trying my best to do this.

if you don't mind me asking, outside of the podcast, what are you working on right now?

I've got three different avenues at the moment. Thanks for asking me the first question as opposed to me asking you the first question. I like it. so yeah, I still run a brand new studio. I've scaled down the operation just to work with core roster of clients just on enjoyable projects that they span for a couple of years. So, that's part of my process at the moment because I actually have not said yes to any new clients for about, what's it, 12, 16, 16 months now. So, So, that's a long time. Yeah, I just literally, I've built for 20 years, I've built a sort of core roster. And 16 months ago, about more than a year ago, I've decided that I was going to make two books. And try to build my book, publishing business, rebuild it again. And I couldn't do the two things together because I was, I had a staff and in the past, and I was paying comes with that pensions and, insurance and like a national insurance and kind of stuff. And it gets busy because we only have sort of one sort of mental headspace and just to build up with young family and it was getting a bit too much. Book business was doing really well in the past, it's almost as much as you put into it, you get back out, it's never like, you put a one pound and you get a hundred pound return for nothing. And so publishing business is like another 35, 40%. And then we are starting a small coffee company, which

I love coffee.

Yeah, everyone loves coffee, but we're trying to sort of build a coffee for creative moment. I know it sounds a little bit like a BS alert, but it's more about how to bring speciality coffee to creative people and people who are interested in good coffee, but don't necessarily know which farm or which blend or which single origin to go for. So we try to create. this thing where actually helps you to discover things through more of a sort of personal match to the coffee profile and the mood, because when it comes to speciality coffee, it's just, it's incredible. it just, the difference is so much better.

Wow. So into like a product business now from client work to publishing to product stuff.

Yeah, look, I'm writing a book about how to do actually a product on the internet or how to create automated income because as you know, you go to these talks and you've got some old, dog talking about look, I'm done with client work now. I'm like, I'm done. Look, sitting here in the audience as a fresh rookie, and you're telling me how to not do client work. Can you tell us how, to actually get ahead of us? So there's going to be a book currently titled Turn Dust Into Gold. It's one of my chapters from the original book. Turn Dust Into Gold in a way of creating automated sort of business of product, just how to do it, where to look for margins. it's going to be quite dry. That's going to be very functional because I think we've all got all these breadcrumbs everywhere around us and Claiming ignorance. It's just not quite right

Yeah. To me, you really like epitomize the whole, like you define creativity.

Thank you

You've like done all and dipped your toe. You've got so much experience as well. So it is really, that's why you should be writing books and doing talks and doing this podcast.

Well, thank you for the, you know, reaffirmation that I'm doing something right. That's very good. Well, to my listeners, welcome to With Jack Creative Podcast. thank you, actually. Thanks for my questions. But I think what I would love to do, talk about ignorance. I think ignorance, I think is a topic that very much goes with what you do. And in fact, ignorance may be a lack of knowledge because, if we claim ignorance, sometimes that's not necessarily the right word. So. You and I, as you introduced us and talked through the introduction, how we met, I very much enjoy your talk in 2018, and I'm not sure if I had already signed up with your insurance company or was about to sign up on the back of your talk, but it was an eye opener because I've been doing this for more than 22, 23, depends on how I remember the stuff, more than 20 plus years. And for most of my original, most of my professional time, my freelance time, I never had a contract. I was winging it. And I was just happy that if, People paid, if it was somehow agreed, people didn't pay. Sometimes, we've written off the losses and stuff, but in some ways, where sometimes insignificant, you know, if someone didn't pay me 20 years ago, 200 pounds for a logo, I can still hold my grudge against them 20 years later, but I'm not going to pursue it, in the law of court, but. But when things get bigger, obviously you realize, okay, I need to protect myself. what I'm doing, obviously, what's, what's the sort of safety policy? Because things get no, you you grow up in the world and you need to change the way you do business because I love this quote at the moment, which says, we'll, got you here. won't get you there. Means what I was doing 20 years ago is absolutely invalid and obsolete to how I'm doing business 20 years later. So insurance was something when I listened to your sort of explanation how it actually works. What do I need to do with it? Because it was yeah, it was all of a sudden like the Got a floodgates of knowledge by insurance open. I was like, Oh, shit, that is so important. And I think I signed up the straight the next day and told everyone to do this. And I was very impressed with how you've set up the product to be accessible and tailored to the micro niche of creatives because. if you look at the big companies like Hiscox or whoever else, it's just, it's crazy. You don't know where to turn and what to do. So let's go back to the start of your journey. What motivates you to hang up your camera and let the wedding people be photographed by somebody else, the bride and groom start insurance company?

I think a few things led to starting my own insurance company. I was working in insurance when I was doing wedding photography on the side and I was figuring out what I wanted my next step to be. I enjoyed photography but I don't know, after doing weddings for several years, I was finding myself enjoying it less and less and it's one of those things where I don't want to take people's money off them if I'm not. you know, 100 percent present and given it my all. so I also felt like with wedding photography, there's always like a ceiling, not that I'm a hugely money oriented person, but there's always a ceiling. You're only ever going to earn as much money as you're physically there shooting and able to do So I liked the idea of having a business that could grow beyond that. Like I said, I was already working in insurance at the time, but it wasn't, insurance for freelancers, it wasn't business insurance, it was a completely separate thing. and so I just started playing around with starting, because I had been a photographer and I'd had this experience of buying insurance, a really terrible experience, like I had no idea what it was that I'd purchased. I just remember, you know, hitting the checkout button. and crossing my fingers and hoping that I'd got the right thing, but also praying that I would never have to find out if I had the right cover, I'd never have to find out if I was in a situation where I needed to use it. so I wanted to start something that Simplified insurance for creatives at the time there weren't any providers that were solely focused on creators Which is why you mentioned like Hiscox and various other providers they have these products and they're trying to market them to small tech businesses with multiple employees or estate agents or solicitors or people like us creative freelancers and what you end up with is you're never able to articulate what exactly this product doesn't, how it helps people. So I think with us being so niche and so focused on freelancers, we're able to pull out all of the relevant bits of the policy and talk about them in a way that resonates with you. Like you were saying, when you heard me speak at that conference, you finally understood how it worked and how it applied to you. And that's what we're trying to do. so yeah, it started with Jack back in. Was it? It was 2016, a launch. So we've been going for a while now. but what I will say is it's very difficult to sell insurance to freelancers. So I'm hoping that conversations like this continue to educate them about how it can benefit them because when it works, it's one of the best things in the world. But the problem that we have is that so many freelancers don't understand how it works.

Yeah, That's an interesting story. It reminds me of a quote of, Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. And I think we all hope for the best, and think that the worst will never come.

Yeah.

that's what happens, because, yeah, as I said, I was blissfully sailing, unsecure. And luckily nothing terrible happened. Yeah. When you say about selling insurance to freelancers, it's almost like you don't know what you don't know, and only when a problem happens, you start searching for solutions. I think it's almost like, how do we get people to understand it quicker? So I've got a couple of car crash examples, which I will talk to you about, which I think will potentially explain some of the products that you do. So my first. example, if it's okay, let's talk about, late payments because late payments is chronic. we like to tell ourselves in a creative industry, it's only us. Like it only affects us, but I think I read an article in the Guardian saying that's pretty much 44, 000 businesses are likely to go out of business because of the cashflow problems. You like a knock on effect. People pay you late, you pay late other people. And it's a big problem. So it's not just the freelancers. You're not like the sort of the unique unicorns going, sorry, if my universe is just us. And obviously it can feel that way, of course, because, you feel like, how come the agency's getting, the money but when you look at it as a sort of full circle, having been freelancing in the past and now running the agency, it's quite tricky to. Sometimes managed to cashflow because running a business is not easy, cheap, no quick or, and effortless. So. I can now see like, Oh, why was I paid a month later from an agency and stuff. But when it comes to dealing with clients, because that's your, especially direct clients, I think that the late payment product is I think it's the most suitable product that, that there is for the issue. So I remember being in a situation where I thought, even though. I thought I had some understanding of the late payment product, it's like, oh, I'm sure if my client doesn't pay, there's a magic pot of money that the insurance will help me, I will get paid by the insurance. And then you realize, actually, I had it all wrong, because there is no magic pot of money, that will recoup income. for those who don't know, how does the product work?

Okay, so, like firstly I just want to say the issue with late payments or non payment, for me it doesn't actually have anything to do with the size of the invoice because earlier you were saying like when it was a smaller invoice it was frustrating but you were willing to write it off. I want to create products that actually prevent people from, wanting to take advantage of freelancers. I want them to realize that they cannot take advantage of us easily because we are coming for them. So I want to stop people from thinking freelancers are vulnerable, they're there to be taken advantage of. That's kind of my, goal. Now I understand where your confusion arose from with that product because there's two products that we have that can assist with non payment but under two different circumstances. Under the professional indemnity policy there is a mitigation costs clause and this is where the insurer will pay the amount that is owed to you by your client if they're not paying but only if it's accompanied with a threat of legal action or something else that would trigger the professional indemnity policy. So some people can find it difficult to differentiate between the different products because they're complex products but there is cover for unpaid invoices under professional indemnity where the insurer There is a pot of money, they will pay you what's owed to you, but only if it's accompanied with something that would trigger your professional indemnity policy.

Could we have an example? What could that trigger be?

Yeah, of course. so professional indemnity claims usually arise when clients are dissatisfied with the service that you've provided and perhaps you've delivered something late, they've then went on to miss a launch date and they're refusing to pay you, and we've had things like clients threatening to, bring legal action against you if you continue to, pursue them for payment, or, we've had a client, there was one issue with scope creep, where the client misunderstood what the developer was actually creating for them. And at the end of the project, he felt like he didn't get the work that he expected to get, and he refused to pay the developer for the work that they'd done. And because there was a dispute with work, they also threatened legal action against the developer for breach of contract and whatnot. Provided there's a situation that triggers the professional indemnity policy and it's accompanied with a refusal to pay you, then there is a pot of money, but we tend to find that those are only very extreme situations and they're quite rare as well. So the product that you're talking about is the legal expenses product and this has a debt recovery service where a solicitor will chase. your overdue payments on your behalf. There are a few caveats like, off the top of my head, I think the invoice has to be over 200, and I think it's limited to invoices. So I think that was one of the problems. you had, I might be wrong, I think your client was abroad. It can be really difficult for them to pursue payment from clients abroad. I think like the whole legal process just changes depending on what jurisdiction the client's in. So for our products, it's limited to UK and EU. so the issue that we tend to find as maybe something you felt you experienced in that situation when you tried to use the service is that freelancers get a little bit jumpy the second that we mention anything legal. The second we mention like there's a solicitor involved, they're a bit like, oh, I just want to get paid. I don't want to go down that legal route. And also the second you involve solicitors, I'm not going to lie, the process becomes lengthy, right? You know what it's like with legal services. It's not a quick fix. It does take time. So it's what I tend to, suggest people use just in extreme situations where they've exhausted all other avenues. But off the back of what happened to you, where I think you ended up using a third party service, off the back of that, I decided that WithJax should launch low hanging fruit type of service. It's not a legal service, so we don't have to sit and pore over your contract to make sure you've done the work that you said you were going to do. We don't have to look into your client's finances, and it's just where we simply provide a credit control service where we're chasing your invoices on your behalf. So it means it's one less thing you have to worry about. But we do also find that with a lot of clients having a third party involved, Suddenly to chase your invoices for you, it frightens them and they're likelier to pay and we've had a lot of success with that. So that's something that we launched off the back of Udexperience. Did I get that right about Udexperience?

and what I'll do actually, I'll tell you what I've gone through in detail because Would you describe it actually makes perfect sense because I was in a situation where a client slipped the onboarding process because it was a work that was done really quickly. There was a short deadline, quick negotiations, no contract was signed. And at that time I was actually, I had a template. I was issuing the work because everything was around, let's say the 20, 25 grand mark for new projects. So the contract was always in place just to even make us look a little bit more professional, And. There was no contract, the work went really quickly. We got paid part of the sum because as it transpired, the company was pretty much a professional money ower. like they owed money to everyone and everything, staff, employee, same thing, staff, contractors, you know, suppliers. They played high gamble, and I think just because of Covid, they lost some of their events they were supposed to run and then, the money wasn't coming in and even there was a sort of high profile investors in the business. yeah, it was a little bit, of a shady operation. So it was the founders were sitting at home in their multimillion pound houses, that the supplies weren't being paid. So I got partial payment. I never been a bit silly about paying the rest of the payment, which was, it was only about a deposit. I think we agreed just to pay it even half, just get that balance cleared and let's do this, and they were not. So after a few emails, which obviously I've got my templates on like how to escalate things. And you you threaten look, I'm going to pass it over to a debt collecting agency, you know. And usually at that point, as you quite rightfully said earlier, people start paying attention. If you say, I'm going to hand it over to, Whatever, an entity you can even make up that can work reminds me of a friend who set up literally a, debt collector credit control. Literally, they just were sending the letters themselves under a different entity. So they've set up a, let's say Store Guard and Brown, debt collectors and they're like, and people start paying attention. They're like, Hey, look, your invoice is unpaid. and unfortunately your friend that you, that's working for you is unhappy, so pay them. And that gets people like, people pay, start paying attention, which is good. So I have, because yeah, at that time you didn't have a product of chasing, actually having, working in credit control. So I appointed that collecting agency. And I was quite impressed because they've guided me through quite a bit of, the process. So one of the things was, would you describe it in mitigation for indemnity? Like my client agreed to work being absolutely fine. And then they agreed to the invoice. That was really important saying, is there an invoice? Are you happy with the work? yeah, there was no problem. So, which was like a massive take, like there is no dispute about the work. There's no dispute about the invoice. There's just a dispute about the payment. So they managed to get a payment plan from the client. And for a while they were like doing a weekly payments, which was fine. And then they stopped and then. My debt collecting agency was on commission, so I think it was like 10 percent from what people know, whatever they 10 percent on top, like not on top, like from the money. So let's say if I got 500. 50 commission on that. So that was the process. And then it stopped and we see it start looking at escalation. Okay. So what do we do next? And this is where having a debt becomes not only cumbersome and inconvenient, but also expensive because to start proceedings to take them to the, CCJ, is that right? CCJ? County court judgment, which is basically. to legally certify they owe you money, that's like, okay, so you need to pay us and you need to pre pay the legal fees and all of a sudden you're looking at a bill of a thousand pounds or nearly a thousand pounds, you're like, this debt is going to cost me money before I get any money. and then you get the caveat like, okay, well, even though if the county court judgment says that they owe you money, which is They don't have to pay it and you're like, Oh my freaking word, so then you have to appoint a bailiff to go and it's just Oh my, you know what? I think I'm going to throw my hat in. I think I'm done here because all of a sudden it costs you money. And then obviously as a company, you get other callers, they're like, Hey, we run this differently. We are different debt collecting agency. I'm like. Yeah, we can guarantee the money. Like we've still got a sales guy who tries to sell you a product. Like we don't do commission. We charge on top and you only pay us like a yearly fee to do this. I'm like, you know what? Let's give it one more shot. It was like a nominal fee of, let's say, 250 pounds a year to pursue as many invoices as you want. But obviously they're all salespeople. They're like, we can't guarantee your money. I was like, well, your sales guy was pretty much saying, you know what, we've looked at their finance, we run a credit check, I wish I was as poor as your clients. Like we can do this. But then as you speak to someone like, what are you going to do? Well, we're going to send them letters. We're going to introduce ourselves. So how are you different? They're like, oh, we're more, more robust. Like we call them all the time. Like it only takes 10 seconds to block your number. You can't call anyone. That product is very much alike from much, from most of the debt collecting agencies just depends on the, from my personal experience on the tone of voice on the authority, like how authoritative your company is. It depends on the branding as well. It just depends on if you're some scrappy company or something and the stakes to some flashy address. And it just depends like how much of a threat do you come to the company.

Yeah, and I will say that what's different about the insurance product, the legal expenses product with the late payment, the debt recovery service is similar to debt collection companies, but the difference with your insurance is that at the end of that process, if your client hasn't paid you, the insurer, assuming the claims covered under the policy, the insurer will help you pursue them through small claims court as well. And the cost of that is covered under your policy. But to be completely transparent, we've yet to have a claim reach that stage, like the debt recovery service, where the insurers covered the claim, they have been able to recover the money prior to that stage. So we've yet to get there. but yeah, it's definitely a tricky problem that I think needs. a better solution. I have a question for you as somebody who has a lot of experience billing clients. Do you find that having certain payment milestones or structuring payments in a certain way can help with that? Like for example, instead of just sending maybe an invoice for a deposit to book the project and then a final invoice at the end of it, do you find Invoicing more regularly eliminates the likelihood of a client not paying or eliminates the likelihood of you missing out on a lot of money due to non payments. You know what I mean?

yeah. So I feel very fortunate to be in a position where I've graduated from that shitshow school of, mid career business, if that makes sense, because I just feel like every career starts knee, deep in the mud and then it gets a bit better and a bit easier and then a little bit easier and everything changes. And then someone once described to me that parenting. Doesn't get easier. It just gets different. You know, there's a different issue. So chasing people for like for smaller parts of money in the past, if you're building 200 or 300 pounds or 500 pounds, five times a week, you've got five invoices to chase. Whereas the billings, the frequency gets, that's slower, what, for what we do now, and we have a trusted partners actually, I invoice people in advance. I don't chase new clients that much anymore. As I've told you at the top of this conversation, we have very much established connections with our clients and with their companies. So sometimes it takes quite a while to get a PO for pre procurement. You know, it takes, usually waiting time. Because once the invoice goes on the company system, it's paid within 24 hours. So, luckily, and I feel like I'm also very lucky and I feel like that's my sort of dividend for 20 years of. crap on and off that I've got clients who pay us what we want to be paid when we want to be paid and they pay as soon as they get the work or as soon as they get the invoice but that's literally I feel like that's a life dividend for sticking with this for 20 years because it wasn't always that easy. So to answer your question for someone because obviously to get to this position I feel as it's a dividend, really had to earn this because you don't get these clients straight away because it also depends on how worthy you are of how much you deliver, how much is your service, because from my experience, if someone tries to launch a new physical product or digital product. Their head is all over the place and usually they're scrappy, you know, they're kind of like the freelancer trying to do their own thing. they don't necessarily think about being on time, spending, billing invoices, because it's question of respect. if you condone yourself, I'm not saying that freelancers don't do it right, but if you condone yourself professionally and say, look. To start this work, this is 50 percent deposit, let's do this. I mean, that should be a standard. And for example, when it comes to, development work, for example, let's say we work on e commerce projects. When the work is signed off for development, we get paid. Literally, I tell people, I look, I have to pay the development team. We have to do this. Of course we don't have to, but that money is locked in. And now it's actually in our, the ball is in our court, making sure we deliver on time. But all of this depends how you carry yourself, how you think about it, how you verbalize this problem, because I've had freelancers who send me an invoice with the final work Well, thanks for the invoice, but the work is wrong. You know, like you can't get ahead of yourself too much and I very much talk about it in a Creativity for Sale, in the book, like the stages of okay, when is it the right time to invoice? When is the right time to chase the invoice? You know, like people have found, which is really interesting is that you get freelancers who are like, I've got three day payment terms. Well, that's great, but I've never heard of it, or 10 days, Oh, I'm chasing the invoice. I'm like, you haven't even delivered the work and you're really chasing your invoice. So you deliver the work a month later and you're chasing the invoice four days later. I was like. If we didn't agree this, I don't have a sort of a magic buffer of cash that we can just give it to you because the client's pissed off because it's late, obviously we are not exactly happy and it's about. Being human about how you carry yourself through the business and how you communicate because that great Carnegie, that Carnegie Hall of Institute, whatever, but there's a quote that 85 percent of your success is how you communicate, innovate, carry yourself, who your personality is, and only 15 percent of your success is your technical skills. So it's a Carnegie, but it's how that is because your work can be let down by how you communicate, how you set up your terms, because it can be so intoxicating to get work. For what you do. So I feel like with freelancing or with creative work and like you do, it's like a two part job. You put your expression out there. Like, okay, I'm going to do work, which is creative. I put my soul into this and also have to run it like a business because, solicitor or let's say debt collector be like, okay, here's the invoice. Here's the phone call. Here's the outcome. Goodbye. No one can say, listen, Jerry, who made up Jerry as a, like Jerry, you didn't make the phone call really good. You know, did you speak to him? did you follow my brief? Did you tell him he owes the money? no one's going to ask Jerry how he does his work. Whereas with creative work, there's so many ifs and buts and possibilities that we really sort of overload the emotional side of how we run our businesses. Because we think that what we create is of the highest value, of the highest expression. We get married to the first idea, thinking that's the best thing ever. we spend more time being emotionally unbalanced before it comes to the payment. So then, you had people like, let's say they wouldn't pay or they say Oh, I don't like the work. I'm not happy with this. The emotional side kicks in and you're like, start, you start seeing red and you're like, well, I've done everything you told me to do. And we become very much emotionally triggered, freelancer, creative, rather than, listen, there's contract, there's conditions, there's the brief, there's a delivery. And if it gets to the stages where client is unhappy and doesn't want to pay. There's something in the middle didn't work out, like something you didn't put right into place, because it's safeguarding of the outcome. And I think you have to be knocked off your feet a few times to actually understand that, you know what, there's no need to be emotional about this business, because put your ego towards the back and don't think that you've created the next masterpiece worthy of know in a VNA museum, then okay, have I done my work? Have I done this right? have, not, have I answered the brief? have I not, have I put the right positioning in place? is this, is my work not competing with that sort of competition, there's so many checkpoints that. Can be so totally missed, especially at the beginning of our careers, because we think I'm getting paid to do my hobby. I'm getting paid to be happy. I'm getting paid for all of this. I'm not getting paid now. What's going on? Yeah. So I think that emotional side of running a business can easily take over our sort of. decision process and our communications. And sometimes we look a bit sort of naive and rookie because, you might have the same match on the other side. Someone might be 20 years old and try to start a startup or a business. So you get a couple of not very knowledgeable parties trying to fight it off. in a very bad style, it's like a pub fight, you know, at 11 o'clock

Yeah.

with after some, too many after many, you know, and for the liquid anaesthetics. And I think this whole process is like, we need to spend more time about knowing what we don't know. So we can be better rounded article, more multifaceted article to be ready for this. Because. If you get someone in a different position, they need to learn, let's say, they create a cosmetics product. So they need to know about the production. They need to know about the FSA certification. They need to know about what's in and what's in there. what is the sort of legal implications of selling the product in the market? Like how to package it, how to sell it, like what's, you know, they've got so much more layers into this. And no one can say well, you didn't tell me what I should and shouldn't do. You know, like it's for us to know, like how did the, even the simple way of getting paid, like how to have an insurance, how to have a contract, cause you said in your conversation, like the contract is good to have the contracts, not going to get you out of trouble. The contract is a piece of paper just to say. This happened. This happened. We agreed to do this and this is our conditions, and people say, I've got a contract. I'm covered. No, you're not like, this is literally like,

No, yeah, nothing stops the client from bringing a claim against you or you can even breach your contract and that leads to a claim being brought against you. I think something you said earlier about, a freelancer's mindset being like, Oh, I'm getting paid to do my hobby. Sometimes I think that's part of the problem. I think from day one, we need to shift our mindset as freelancers and really treat this like a business. And that does mean getting yourself a contract. getting yourself insured and even the way you communicate with clients as well. because I've noticed that a lot of people, when they come to me with problems with a client, They'll say, oh, I threw this extra work in for free just because the client was being nice and not in every situation, but suddenly the client's going, well, I've now got more work than I expected. freelancer isn't adhering to the original project scope or the original terms. So where do we stop from here? I'm just going to keep asking for more and more work. And before you know it, there's a whole can of worms that's been opened and the freelancers in a really difficult situation. So I think like changing your mindset, approaching it like a business and getting everything kind of getting all your ducks in a row from day one is not going to completely eliminate problems because there are always going to be difficult clients out there, but it's going to help you handle those problems better when they arise.

absolutely. if there's one tip I can suggest to people, it's, one tip for me now, but working on a sort of itemized brief sometimes creates a lot of trouble going, where's the business card? Where's the letterhead? Where's the poster? Where's this? And I think with freelancers, it's more like a, it's like tradies, like I've always feel like freelancer is like a tradie, like, okay, my pipe is broken. I need a plumber. My Logo is broken. I need a logo designer. It's kind of like a very singular sort of exchange of, work. Whereas when you start selling your work as services It's much like it's literally like how to build a house. You need multiples of different skills or and or disciplines to actually create the work and what I Tell our clients or how we build right now is that they say, okay, we need XY's are done And they say, I need X, Y, Z done. And I'll say, okay, we've got a day rate, which is a studio rate, which is eight hours. And I assumed it's going to take three days to create. And obviously we've got 24 hours to do it. 24 working hours. And obviously the client knows that the time will take that. And let's say within a day and a half, they're like, actually, we've got changes. We're going to change this. And we go, no, are you? And I'm like, okay, cool. Still, we're still within your time. There's not a problem. And I think that's such an easy way, again, like the emotional, battle with the client. It's so easy to get in because They realized that what they've started, they've visualized it. Oh, now we see it. Actually, this is not quite right. We need to change our minds, but the freelancer or the designers are not going to change their mind. They'll be like, Oh, we actually, you know what? I'm happy to change this for you because what they feel they're getting paid for that one blog, you know? So like you fixed that leaky pipe, but actually there's a bigger hole just up the pipe, I'm sorry, the plumber metaphors that arrive on this podcast. And you're like, but you asked me to fix. This pipe, but it's not my, hole up there. Like the hole up there is not my problem. Whereas if you say, look, you've got me here for eight hours. Like this will take me eight hours. Actually it will take me three hours and you go five hours spare. I'm happy to look at this, I'm happy to look at that, and I'm happy to actually just look at the pipes that you told me where the leak is. But if you want me to check around the house, if there's any other problems, I'm happy to do it. And then it becomes a broader conversation because. For most of the projects we've done in the last five years, the work was very little about the logo. The work was very little about the original problem. It was very little about the original point of conversation because you open the patient and you find out, okay, this is what needs to happen. This is what needs to be fixed. This is actually, what we can improve on your conversation. Actually, we can build a better product as a result of a conversation. So when you see freelance workers, sort interchange, like when you got like a transactional. When you see the work as transactional, it's very easy to be very transactional about the detail. Whereas when you hold yourself more authoritative and more knowledgeable and going. I listened to your problem. This is my services. This is the outcome. This is what we can do for you as a, broader package. Then it becomes easier because everyone's more at ease because I found with clients that more you explain to them what's in the process, the more you explain to them what you need to do to get to do from A to B to Z, they become more at ease with, knowing what's going to happen. They start this. They stopped counting their money. They stopped worrying about what's going to happen. And it just gets much, much easier to get paid and just to deliver a project.

So are you saying that your approach, just so I can understand this correctly, your approach has been more so to say to clients like Here's what we do and here's the amount of time you have us for and that means that if the project does change scope, which we find happens a lot, that you're easily adaptable to that and then it minimizes problems or conflict around scope changes and payment. Is that correct?

A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. So if someone comes, let's say for a branding package, let's say they want that cosmetic product from an idea to, to an online e commerce store. There's going to be lots of changes, things will change. Things will, will have to be amended, adapted to the situation. They will come inevitably down the road. And I just see this, I sell time. I sell time more than the individual itemized billings because. I've seen internal quotes from agencies. They're like, two grand for Twitter template and that one. And it's just, it gets messy. Like it just literally done. You give people reasons to start splitting hairs. Whereas if you say, look, I've got your bag, I can make my studio available for a week for you. and I think that's, what's really good. As you say, look, this will take two weeks over the course of three months. You pay us for two weeks of time for the block of, so that's 80 hours. They can do whatever they want. If they want us to come to their offices and sing, you know, hallelujah, whatever, we can do that because we've been paid for it. So it's been more about flexible and actually having conversations with people and saying look, we know you tell us what you think you want, and we're going to help you to get the right stuff to build the product. I always say like. People come to creatives saying look, I really want a car. Great. We can build you one. Okay. What do you want now? They're like, maybe a steering wheel and a couple of seats just to see how, I'll see how it goes. you need a lot more than that. Like you need a lot more parts, a lot more process, a lot more thought and more strategy into actually delivering this project because it's not that simple. But people see it from a transactional I can say that for a long time, I've been trying to master the process of like how we can package this stuff, how we can deliver this, how we speak to people. I thought for a while, like, look, I finally got it. Let's say five or six years ago, I finally got it. And then me and my wife were trying to renovate our house and we had a great builder. He was helping us with all the sort of, he was asking me all the questions. I was making all the decisions, but then me and my wife went to the bathroom shop. That, I wasn't prepared for like you scout with Pinterest for everything, you know, like, okay, this is what I want and stuff. And this bathroom show was saying, look, we only start projects at five grand and that's our minimum spend. Okay, well, let's have a chat. I didn't know what I want. there was a restriction, there was a space restriction and I turned into an idiot client, like maybe put a shelf in there, maybe put the, I was throwing everything at it. And I'm thinking. Oh, I'm a patient zero here. Literally, I'm like, I'm the case study of an idiot going anything, anyhow, because the person on the other side wasn't guiding us to the right result, to the right idea, because she didn't have the constraints from us, because we were like, maybe, you know, sink, we need a sink, we need a bath, tiles, and then you just have which tiles, what size, what color, and in fact, I need to be better prepared for this, but, If you're trying to sell me tiles and a bath, I don't know which way it's going. I'm not going to pay you for it, but I'm not going to commit to this because I'm not really sure what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, or I just felt the process wasn't clear and I was very much almost stunned by how I failed to get any process in the way. I had to do a lot more sort of finding and planning and reference finding and planning of like how I can actually get the space properly done. And it took a lot longer. So all about a communication of like, how do we get the other side to fully understand? Because as you know, if you can work with people every day, you can be with your partner every day. And you can still have moments in the day when you go cross wires and when you like, when you've got clients on the other side of the world and different cultures, different everything, you know, way of conducting a business, so much can go amiss and you can't say, well, it worked with my friend, Gary down the road to someone in Brazil. And it's really like, personal and business growth is for me, like so much more important than following the latest, Adobe 10 features and, you know, spending time on general generative AI, because I found from writing these two books, the kind of audit, personal audit of my personal and business skills, like what has led me to this sort of situation where actually I can say, you know what? I can enjoy this now, like we've done a lot of hard work of learning, growing, getting knocked back, getting knocked down, picking ourselves up and thinking there's some pattern recognition in this. I don't think We should be doing it the same way as we did before, because we're not going to get far doing the same way.

So do you still provide a client with a statement of work, or is it just more of a general, instead of itemizing what they can expect, is it more just a general design and build? Or do you know what I mean? I suppose I'm just trying to understand how explicit you are with your clients about what they're going to get, just because we find like loads of our issues between freelancers and clients stem from like lack of communication or misunderstanding. So I just want to understand How you approach that, because you are very flexible and they're booking out your time. Do you provide them with a statement of work that itemizes what they're getting or is it just more general?

do have a sort of deliverables list. because I mean, there's an original contract with every client in place for providing services. So it can just seem like that there's a clause for a brief that sort of can be added to an audition. You're like, okay, at this point we did X, Y, Z, but. What happens with our clients now that often they come with a problem or a shape of a problem and say, okay, we need this solved, or we need this provided. So let's say we do, a campaign, imagery an ice cream brand. So we know what the flavors are, we know what the colors are, we know what the sizing, no, we need to do that kind of stuff. So we go, okay, we're gonna do this. So it's. depending on this. And sometimes they can say, okay, the flavor's changed. Like there's something like you got a sort of scope of amending the product or like amending the outcome. Like we can do that. But what they normally do, they would, at that time when they commissioned the work, they provide a PO, which says we want this X, Y, Z done. So there's always some form of communication, some form of document to say. That's the work, that's what we're doing, and I'm very lucky that we've got such a deep relationship with these clients that they really respect what we do and respect what they want from us. it becomes a little bit easier, to do this. So I think in my life, in my sort of professional life, I think wrote like one statement of work that didn't go anywhere. we normally provide quite sort of detailed estimates, which say what goes into process. So sometimes some people do proposals, they're like, they spend copying and pasting some information about a client and how the work is going to go and stuff. Whereas from experience, I know that. People don't read. People want to see pretty pictures, you know,

Tell me about it. Yeah, I know that.

I think that's just, you know, for someone who writes, who's got a publishing business, like I know people don't read anything over 300 words and that's sometimes not 300 words, too many. So. It's about effectiveness, we don't do tenders because that's way too many pages for my liking. So we itemize what we're going to do. We don't have to commit to every single sort of part because there is a process. I feel like with creative work, it's like an equation from start to finish. Now, if this adds with this, you know, if this, these things add up, you get the right outcome. If you fail in one part, it's not going to add up. You know, it's literally as simple as that. what I would suggest, like, it's some form of like just a reference document is good to have, you know, you can just have someone to say itemized email to say because email is a legal form of communication that you can submit to a court if you needed to, then.

it's so important to have that audit trail.

Yeah, absolutely. So just having it written where people say, yeah, I'm happy. Like just reply to me. You're happy. Just know if you're happy for me to go ahead. My accountant doesn't submit my VAT until I'd say I'm happy with this, submitted. So it's like the paper trail is very important because there's nuances. I always feel with the creative work, because it can, as I've talked about this with emotional expenditure, it can be it can take over us because you're not necessarily thinking about, look, I've onboarded a client. I'm going to set up, let's say, a sign up board and we're going to itemize going to get a contract placed because we're thinking like, I've got tax bill to pay. This client's going to help me to do this. So I'm going to focus on the work and let's see, you know, how quickly I can do this. You like I'm not necessarily thinking about, the problems that I talked about a client that slipped through the net. Like we didn't have a contract. We didn't actually itemize. We didn't have a proper sign off. Like it was a mess. And you're thinking. It's going to pay off to take an hour to put everything in place, to set it up and go, you know what, I feel like I'm running my business a bit better because when I was writing creativity for sale. It's that sort of, that vegan meme when you go guy who goes mmm, mmm, and you're like, I want to tell everyone I'm vegan, but I can't. And it's just like, how do I not tell everyone, say, look in every book, in every business book it says, every sort of book on freelancing or creativity or business says, you know what, this is business. Because It's blatantly obvious, yet in that hobbyist sort of mindset, kind of in talk like dopamine and intoxication with thinking like, Hey, I am getting paid for sitting at home in my pants, creating posters. This is amazing. And then you realize. You know what? There's so much more that goes into it. I spent 42, 000 words of just explaining how you can do this just to get to the starting line to do this properly, to set yourself up properly. And then you know what? You go again, like what you've created a year ago needs a tweak. Like you need to still learn what's changing because if all my business is What worked a year ago or two years ago or six years ago doesn't work now. everything's adapting. Everything's changing and as I said, we talked about it at the beginning, like knowing what you don't know doesn't apply anymore. the information is there. The breadcrumbs are out there, you can actually. learn what you need to learn and go with it because yes, you need to work on yourself as a creative professional, like John Mayer still does guitar tutorials, like famous musicians still practice, you know, they're like athletes, they look after their craft, but they're also like, you have to be, understanding like who you work for, how do you do it, like are you servicing and who do you want to work with and what do you want to do? And I think that's inexcusable because you can't repeat ignorance these days.

And I think that, going back to the project you said that was a bit of a disaster, I think firstly, it's okay to make those mistakes. They might be expensive mistakes, but the good thing is you'll probably just make them once, like you adapted and tweaked things going forward. So I think if anybody's listening and they're maybe thinking, Oh, no, I'm doing things a bit wrong, or you're going to change in a titty on your business as you, grow and become more mature. So it's okay to make mistakes, but hopefully you learn from them and put measures in place to prevent them from happening again.

if there's one message from my life of work is you're not alone. Like everyone has the same mistakes. Everyone's got the same problems. They just look different. There might be a different language with different clients and different people, but all our careers are so much alike yet. Sometimes, we can easily tell ourselves we are the only with the problem. All right now in this moment and as you said like making the same mistake twice, you know if you want that phrase like you'd never step in the same river twice, whatever's that quote you know, never get them right.

Whoa, lots of quotes.

yeah, I put quotes in my books

You must read a lot.

I do, they inspire me. Yeah, not making the same mistake twice. Like, of course, like that was the only client who slipped through the net properly. And it was a very expensive chapter in my book, it's something that I've learned and I've detailed a process for people to think, Oh, that's what could happen, you know, because. We've got lots of books on, look, show your work, steal like an artist, life is great. It's just, we need those books, we need the inspiration, but ambition always meets the reality and the reality goes, ha, so you thought that could be the reality, it's

So is your new book quite practical then?

it's very much, it's a guide on how to start and grow what I call a life changing business. So I need to send you a copy so you can see it, but it's very much about. Speaking to the mind and the person, I don't obsess about sort of portfolio details and the kind of stuff. It's look, if you want to do this. You can do this because the book starts with a chapter about me jumping into the waves in Bali. It's like a seven foot waves With a surfboard just getting whacked out wiped out, you know, totally like making it back to the shore in no time thinking Yeah, I thought it was a good surfer but I wasn't as good surfer as I needed to be and that's my life analogy of like I think I can do this business because I can make a business card for a taxi driver or for, mom's bakery or whatever. And then you realize you jump in and it's like, Oh, the whole thing can just. take you under, wipe you out and throw you back on the shore thinking you need a little bit more information. You need a bit more experience. You need to do more work on yourself and get insurance someplace, at some time because, yeah, things get real, real quickly. And repeating myself, but more framework and more groundwork and foundation you put into your business. you don't have to think about it. it's, that's the best bit.

Yeah, do you know what I like about insurance? and it doesn't have to be through with Jack, right? Just going to any business insurance provider. So I can tell you now that statistically speaking, you're probably not going to have to make a claim on your policy, right? But I do know that every freelancer benefits from being insured because it can really change the way that you speak with your clients. It can give you the confidence that you need to have difficult conversations with clients or stand up to clients who are maybe trying to take advantage of you. So I think, statistically speaking, you're not going to use the practical elements of your insurance, but every freelancer and creative person benefits from having it. I also think it's really cheap as well. we're talking about these products that can help you chase late payments. It costs about 5 a month for that. so yeah, I would just love for more. creatives to consider the boring stuff like that. Like I say, it doesn't have to be through with Jack. This isn't an advert for with Jack, but just yeah, look into it and get it sorted.

I think if there's one point to add, it's from my experience, even from so far, mid career experience, that the bigger the work you're going for, actually some organizations and companies actually require you to have a business insurance and indemnity insurance, because they want to make sure that if you actually fuck up, that you're covered, they know that they're covered. So it's, easy to have dream client list without. the actual reality behind it, because you think you're going to do bigger stuff, bigger work with bigger, bigger organizations, but all of that requires a lot more behind the scenes to make sure that nothing goes wrong because it's easy to think like, okay, you know what? I can jump, the queue. I can go from a bedroom freelancer to being, a branding studio. in no time, but it does not. you need mostly personal experience, you need professional experience. And mostly having the right documents and the right sort of insurance policy in place. It's almost a must, you know, you can't just hope for the best, because you

No.

for the worst really.

Yeah. And it's not just clients that request it, platforms like, Juno and whatnot, they require you to have it too. But certainly if you make a mistake in your work or the client perceives you to have made a mistake, which we find is the likeliest outcome, then. They need to know that they can recover whatever expenses have been incurred as a result of that mistake from you. If you don't have insurance, you're putting yourself in a really difficult situation there. You're probably not going to have the funds to be able to. dig yourself out of that hole. So that's where insurance comes in.

I think it's been a very enlightening conversation. I'll just finish this conversation with one story, which is actually not mine, but it's a story of a friend of mine. he was quite shrewd, but he took on a project years ago, absolutely years ago with a client, that was, let's say, client number two, three or four. And my friend is quite versatile, he's a producer, so he's decided to create this project. Digital product for a client and the client briefed it and it quite quickly became a nightmare. it was not necessarily scope query. It was more like a sort of scope misunderstanding because what seems quite easy on the outside, like that's not that like surfboard, it's quite difficult on the inside to actually produce. And it got to the point where the project failed. And my client and my friend was being sued, for the loss of income by his client What my friend did he actually decided to wind down the company before the legal proceedings Just so he can get away or get away from the issue So that was his thing. Obviously, I believe that if he had a professional indemnity insurance That could be then negotiated. I think that could be done worked out and what that's That's your insurance there it's kind of like a hard stopping moment when you realize that something that serious happens, because we never really think about stuff that could go wrong, especially have such a knock on implications on sort of clients, revenue or work on their business operations, because we see that sort of as a, again, transactional value, like you needed this, I'll give you that. But, Oh, I didn't really know. It's so much bigger impact. And yeah, If someone decides after this conversation that they still don't need insurance, I wish them all the luck, but I think from my experience, they should look up someone like your company with Jack and speak to you because, yeah, it's, I feel safe with your insurance policy.

Yeah. And listen, I love talking about insurance. So people have a lot of questions about it or so they should, because like we've said, these are complicated products. So even if you're not a customer, get in touch and ask me any questions you have about it. And I'd be happy to answer it. Like my personal goal is to help as many creatives as possible. Yeah, any questions you have about insurance at all, just get in touch and hopefully we can, convey the value of it because it is, I know I'm biased because I'm in the trenches and I see the problems regularly happening, but I would not run a business without it.

I think you mentioned before we started recording that you're looking at creating some video content and give more information to the public and especially the creative public about this. So I think once it becomes available, I'd be happy to share this and because yeah, I think there's never really enough business information that you can not have a note because it makes you. As I always keep saying like the more multifaceted and more rounder and kind of safer and more More secure in what you're doing, as a creative because yeah, I think if there's one thing I mean you want to be focused on being creative It comes with everything else done, you know It's just like you cook your meal after everything's done and set up and you're like, okay I can now enjoy the meal rather than going

well, keep an eye on our social media channels because we are going to go big on the content this year.

Excellent. So, where will people find you? Is it VivJack? What's the website again?

So the website's withjack. co. uk The Instagram, any social media channels are a little bit annoying because they have an underscore and then with Jack just

Yeah.

difficult to get the handles for it.

Right. One last question. don't think I've ever asked you that question. I will let you go after this. VivJack. What's the name? Where did it come from?

Oh, so I named after my dad because he's the whole reason that I got into insurance. Like, I took over the family insurance business when I was 18 and then drove it into the ground, didn't really do a good job of maintaining it or building it. But then when I went on to start my own insurance business, because he was the reason I got into it, I wanted it to have a nod back to him. So I'm not very creative or inventive with names, so instead I just named it after my dad. the little mascot you see on the website, that's based on him as well.

I was going to say now it all makes perfect sense. thank you so much. Actually, thanks so much for your time. I think we can talk about for another two or three hours easily about these stories and what people could and should do. thanks so much for your time. It's great to have you on the show and I hope to speak to you soon.

Thanks for having me, I'll speak to you soon.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Creativity for Sale podcast. The show was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinic. Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil mackay,. from 7 million Bikes Podcasts, Theme music was written and produced by Robert Summerfield. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please subscribe and leave a rating or review. To get your own action plan on how to start and grow a life changing creative business. You can get a copy of the Creativity for Sale book via the links in show notes. burning, and until next time, I'm Radim Malinich, your guide through this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all.