S8, Ep 5: Beth Perkins. Creative Retoucher

From the darkroom to the digital realm, Beth Perkins takes us on a captivating journey through her evolution as a creative retoucher. Processing black and white photos with her father at just six years old sparked a lifelong passion that would eventually lead Beth from Canada to the UK, where she now runs her own creative retouching business.

Find Beth here:

Instagram @beth_petrie_creative 

Portfolio: www.bethpetriecreative.co.uk

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-perkins-26b65425/

Chapters

• 0:44 Episode Introduction with Beth Perkins
• 4:02 Film vs. Digital Photography Evolution
• 11:12 The Art of Authentic Retouching
• 20:12 AI's Impact on Creative Work
• 27:42 Transitioning to Freelance Business Ownership
• 42:32 Creating Content and Building Community
• 58:12 Future Goals and Finding Inspiration

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hello and welcome to Stylitch Chats with Creatives. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking to Beth Perkins. She is a freelance researcher. She's based in the Midlands and her business is called Beth Petrie Creative. You're Canadian this is where I've just like I just had a little moment then but you're Canadian, but you're originally from Scotland, but you're back in the UK.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Well, my parents are Scottish and they emigrated to Canada. I was born in Canada but because obviously they're British, I have a British passport, so I moved back to Scotland or moved to Scotland and then have ended up in the Midlands for various reasons for work, basically yeah, that's so cool that you like how long ago was this?

Speaker 1: 1:06

about 20 years yeah, 20, 21 years, pretty much almost now oh my god, so you've been quite young just going like, ah, fuck it, I'm just gonna go back to the uk see what it's all about. Yeah, were you shocked that? You?

Speaker 2: 1:19

were moving back, or I don't think so. I'd finished my university, my second university degree, and then moved back home again for like the second time and I lived with both of them at that point. I'd lived with my mom first, then I went and lived with my dad and I think it was, work was fine, everything was fine. I was working at a Photoshop and, you know, doing some talks on photography and things, but it just wasn't really going anywhere. So I'd mentioned that you know I was going to get my passport and I thought I'd look to go and I just kind of got a return ticket for I think it was I left at the end of February and then was going to come home around Christmas and just sort of took as much as I could carry and then came over and then I've just kind of never I've gone back, obviously, but I've never gone back.

Speaker 1: 2:01

That's cool. So how did you find your degree? Because I know you've got. Have you got two degrees or were they the same degree mixed together, the two degrees?

Speaker 2: 2:10

So in Canada you can go to college, which isn't like college here, it's like university, a bit like in the States. So I did two two year sort of they're called associate degrees, so they're more practical, a little bit, I guess, I think, like an NVQ here, but you have to finish high school to get into them. A little bit, I guess I think, like an NVQ here, but you have to have finished high school to get into them, um. So I did a degree in um, visual arts, and then I, out of that I then did a degree in professional photo imaging, which was everything from we started with four by five black and white cameras, um, and processing and mixing chemistry, all the way up to digital. And it was just when digital was starting to come in to sort of professional photography and like sports and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 2:48

So that's cool. It sounds like you kind of like bridged both sides of it. Yeah, is there. Do you have a preference? Do you prefer?

Speaker 2: 2:57

there's a certain nostalgia to the, to the film cameras and stuff, though isn't there yeah, I re-bought a film, my favorite film camera that I, the ones I brought over with me. I just sold those up and moved to digital and everything over the years. But I re-bought it a few years ago and I do love it and took it on holiday this year. But I've just never done the film because it was that you have to. You have to send it away to get it fit, to get it done now in most places so it's not quite as easy. I love the look of film and I ended up making some of my digital photos and the photography I do do look a bit like film. So that's and it's quite big right now. It's quite a thing to do. There's a lot of film photography going on in the fashion world and stuff, so they've kind of gone backwards. I think I like the instant gratification of digital with the look of film.

Speaker 1: 3:41

I agree with you. I like the look of film and, but I like instantly seeing stuff. Yeah, like I remember as a kid waiting for the films to come back from, like boots or whatever, and you'd be like, oh god, we, only you had 30 shots or whatever it was. And then there'd be like five, yeah, we're just shit black. Nothing was taken and someone would be like, well, that was the dog.

Speaker 2: 4:04

And you're like, no, that, there's nothing there the dog has just flown past the frame, you've not been fast enough to catch it, so it's the street. Yeah, and I kind of like the jeopardy of that and I think that there's an element of you have to have been, you have to have had the eye and understand lighting and understand photography to take film photos properly and in good quantity without having those issues, whereas with digital nowadays everybody can just go and you can just take 200 shots and pick the best one out of those 200. So there's I don't want to say there's less skill, because really good digital photographers or photographers that use digital cameras still have the eye and you can tell. But you with film you had to technically, had to be better.

Speaker 1: 4:48

I think in in the, the real basics of of how it all works, I look back at some stuff like from the 90s, you know, like the catalogs and stuff, and I think, holy shit, they did all of that in film, in shot, and all the styling was in shot. And I look back and think, yes, the items are hideous because it's the 90s, but like, the skill behind it, yeah, is different to the skills now. It's just a different set of skills.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Well, because you're not editing on set, right like nowadays you can. You can style them and then you can have the, the laptop at the back. You'll have your first set of of retouching going on as as they're being shot, and you know what's worked, whereas before and this is why I think it's a lot of people are going back to that, the in sort of the fashion stuff. They're using a lot of 120 film and larger cameras because there's that skill, there's that kind of understanding of it and that quality about it that you don't get anywhere else, but also there's, you know, you're doing a good job because you're able to take photos this way. So there's that putting themselves above sort of people who are just going to yeah yeah, I like the resurgence of it.

Speaker 1: 5:56

it's very nostalgic. I'm enjoying it, I'm here for it, here for it to stay in all honesty, although I'd love to actually know how to use my film camera that I bought because I am useless, absolutely useless at it.

Speaker 2: 6:10

So yeah, it's not too bad, it's just you get to practice a lot and the only thing of the now is that it's so expensive to process and to buy film, whereas before you'd get free film every time. You took one in, you could go into wherever it was and they'd give you a free film, like Boots would give you one back, so you'd come back to them.

Speaker 1: 6:30

But yeah, you don't get that anymore. No, I think the last time I did some film, oh god, was like 2018 maybe, and I think it cost me like 20 quid per film. Yeah, and that sounds extortionate, but I feel like that's right.

Speaker 2: 6:41

Oh yeah, absolutely because there was a huge resurgence through covid um because people weren't sure, didn't have all this time and didn't know what to do. So people were finding cameras in their attics and they were bringing them out and giving them to their grandkids or whatever that was. And now there's a big thing in the universities and stuff where people are the kids, students coming along and using film. But it is that much more expensive to do now that you really have to want to do it to be able to really afford to do it.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Yeah, it's. Yeah, 20 quid is is easy and then you can spend the same amount getting it processed and yeah yeah, they don't work, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:16

And then you're like, oh great, just I fucked up half that film. Where did you get your passion for photography and creative eye from?

Speaker 2: 7:24

and so dad, my dad and his dad did photography and I've got a camera of theirs that I've got still, that I inherited from him when he passed away, but so from my dad, really, my back home. I haven't brought them over but I've still got my first photos that I ever took and processed. That I remember taking and processing and I was probably six or seven and we took photos of the Christmas tree we were going to buy at the Christmas tree farm in the snow and I took a picture of my dad's car. This is all black and white and then we processed them and printed them in our basement. So he had it all set up and I can remember it how he had it set up and we kind of just kept doing that and he was he was a really interesting guy because he also was really big into art, but he was also like a really methodical kind of stats kind of guy as well, so he had all these things going on.

Speaker 1: 8:10

But yeah, the art side of things and the photography side of things was definitely from my dad, absolutely that's so cool that he was like come on, let's go and process some stuff at such a young age as well.

Speaker 2: 8:21

You were so young, yeah no, it was really good and I think, looking at those photos now and now I've kind of taken that and do that with my little boy but obviously we don't do processing with chemistry and stuff but he's had a camera since he was a toddler and he's just learned to do stuff and just played with stuff, and so now we'll go out and do that and one of the badges we're going to do for his cubs is going to be his photography badge and badge. And so we've gone out, we've taken photos and then I've kind of showed him how to edit them, um, and then we're going to do like a little. He's been learning how to do presentations like powerpoint type things at school, so we're going to put it all together for him to take in. So it's a really neat way to just kind of carry that through.

Speaker 1: 8:58

So that's what a cool skill to like pass on as well. Like because I really admire you retouching folk, because it blows my mind, so it really like for you to then pass that on to your son. It's not something that's ever going to go away. We're always going to need people to retouch. You're always going to need like shots to be manipulated. Like you know, it's not something that I can see going away.

Speaker 2: 9:23

I don't think so. I think, with the amount of visual content that there is nowadays, people are wanting more and more creative things, and I think that's where creative sort of composite retouching comes into play, because you're creating an image that doesn't exist and isn't going to go get shot, or you can't say the client can't afford to have that shot, so you create it out of a couple of images that they've stock images that they've bought. So it's a really interesting in between where you can really create some amazing content for people that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to have, and and I think that's what that's what I like the most is of doing that kind of thing so how did you find out that that you enjoyed doing that?

Speaker 1: 10:01

was that just trial and error? And you were like, oh, this is cool, this has happened, or?

Speaker 2: 10:06

part of my degree when I did my photo imaging degree was. So I chose two specialist subjects, two specialist avenues, and one of them was sports photography. So, um, and not just sports specifically, but, um, journalist journalism photography, um. So I did two weeks with a newspaper and then the other one was digital photography and part of that was to create composite. Um.

Speaker 2: 10:29

So go and look at something, find something in a magazine that you really liked, and then try and recreate it with your own photography and then using really early versions of photoshop at that point, because it's the early 2000s but using photoshop to then create the same sort of an image. And I love that bit, and I always loved the, the retouching or the editing side of the of images, just to make them, because you can take a really great image and you can compose it really well and you can style it really well, but the lighting isn't going to be perfect. There's always going to be something in the way that you can't get rid of and I just like making them perfect, but without them looking like they've been made perfect yeah, that's a skill within itself as well.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Is like, not over retouching? Yeah, that's like quite a um, yeah, quite a skill. Because when I first started um styling in gonna show my age 2010, 20, 2009, 2010, something like that, maybe a little. Yeah, around that time, do you know? The thought that just popped into my head was like Rihanna's song. I was like, oh yeah, that's from like 2010. I couldn't name you the song and I'm definitely not going to sing it. Um, the early doors, when we were shooting model, they were heavily, heavily, heavily retouched, heavily retouched. Yeah, like, and it would be down to a case of getting rid of people's moles, yeah, and like, really like, almost it's an art in its own form, isn't it? But it wasn't. I wouldn't have said it was deceiving because it was of the time, but, yeah, looking back now, if you looked at the images, you'd probably be like, holy shit, she definitely does not look like that in real life, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 12:04

I think there's a huge thing. It's also very cultural because that still happens in some places. So there's still some parts of the world where the retouching is done in a completely different way, and I think I saw something on a retouching Facebook group once and they were advertising the fact that they could make this model look 20, 30 pounds lighter and I was like, well, that's not what I would do 30 pounds lighter and I was like, well, that's not not what I would do, like this is, but there it would have been from a different. It was from a different area of the world where that's still seen as something that you do. But that's not what we do.

Speaker 2: 12:37

And I think we've. There's a we have a massive responsibility as retouchers to to hold the ground like hold the line on what is accessible, acceptable and what isn't, so what's authentic, what's ethical, especially when you start looking at and bringing in AI and things, looking at how you can you ethically retouch something that isn't then going to create bigger issues in the in the long run and I think the whole dove campaign about people looking the way they look really started that conversation and you then bring in and things like the eyelashes being fake all those kinds of campaigns that come out and are now and they've been brought out and people are like, no, we won't, we won't stand for it.

Speaker 1: 13:17

So we need to just be really careful that what we do makes the product or the image look as good as possible, but without making it not realistic and causing more issues than than there were to begin with, especially from a body image point of view yeah, I think the body image thing is massive, especially at the minute it goes in cycles, doesn't it, where people start to accept their body and then all of a sudden something like a zen pic comes in and we're back to 1995 again or early noughties, and I think that's a dangerous tightrope that society is currently walking on at the moment. Like you know, everyone deserves to feel happy and healthy in their body, but also we shouldn't be pushing our own societal expectations on others.

Speaker 2: 14:10

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think that's where there's that, that line, and everybody's going to have a different view on how they do this. So I know what I would and wouldn't do. And if I had somebody say to me um, the the, the client says this this person wants to have a little bit of, I'll do bits and little bits and pieces, but what I won't do is make them look like a completely different person, like just not who I or what I want to be known to do, and it's the other thing in terms of like skin tones and stuff. You lose all those textures and things and then they just don't look real anymore. They look plastic and they look like a filter. And that you can do that easy enough on a filter on a phone. That doesn't take very much skill to do. Actually you can over edit somebody very easily with some few buttons. Making it look real and that it's not been touched is a whole lot harder than than just hitting a filter yeah, yeah, I'm, yeah, I think as well you're right with skin texture.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Like we've all got textured skin. You know how much can be shown or needs to be shown. And you say, right, the cultural differences as well are huge. Like you know, there's certain retouch services that I've seen and I'm like, holy shit, I show you before and after and I think they're two different people. Sorry, they're two different people, but maybe it's just because people have different societal expectations. You know, yeah, but I think you're so right.

Speaker 2: 15:31

it gentle retouching is how I'd maybe like say it like, but it's actually you're still putting in an awful lot of work to make it look especially really good fashion stuff and I don't do super high fashion, but I have done some training on it and I did a course on it and it is really interesting and really good.

Speaker 2: 15:48

I just don't do a ton of it, so I don't get the practice. But just to make the shadows look more natural even though the shadows are what was there when the lighting was on them but to smooth it out and to make the transitions between the shadows look nicer is not easy and it it looks easy. It looks that you wouldn't even know what had happened. But to make like to make it look like a nicer shaped shadow rather than it being a bit lumpy is actually a really difficult thing to do. And you get down to kind of the level of of being really close in and just doing little sections of a face and you're kind of making one bit darker and one bit lighter and sort of. It can be really really um indepth and take quite a long time and then look like nothing's happened.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Yeah, yeah. And then you zoom out and you're like, oh shit, I'm not in the wrong place.

Speaker 2: 16:38

But if you see the before and after, that's where you really see it, and I think that's the big thing is for people behind the scenes, especially with retouching, to really understand what it is that goes into an image, even if it's just product images like lighting, changes of lightings and changing of the background colors or anything like that. Just knowing what the original looked like and then where you got to kind of gives people an idea of what work's gone into it.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Yeah, so how do you feel AI is impacting your work?

Speaker 2: 17:06

Well, ai is in everything. So Photoshop has AI all the way through it, because you can. What took us hours, years and years ago to remove something and make it look like it wasn't there takes minutes, seconds even, depending on what it is with tools within, with the remove tool in Photoshop, so that just speeds things up. That means that we can do more intricate stuff and more creative things in the same amount of time that it would have taken us. So the time scales have come down. So what we can do in a time is a lot more, um, but it also means that we've got a lot more creativity. So there are a lot of AI elements within all the editing programs and they make things just that much easier.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Where you struggle a bit is when you're doing this sort of generative stuff. So when you're asking it to create something, it's not unless you are working with some of the more expensive programs that specifically designed to create people and things like that. If you're just using something like photoshop to create, I've asked it to give me an image of a family in the snow, um, and you end up with like eyes that aren't quite right, or fingers that have merged into claws, or and I've fixed images like that before because I've gotten so far through the client's requests that I didn't realize they were ai. So I've ended up fixing and adding fingers back in because they needed to use the image. So then it was a case of okay, well, now we need to go through and fix all the bits that are that are not good.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Um, so those kinds of the, the more generic programs have a really hard time with faces, eyes, hands, hands that kind of thing, ears, stuff like that depth perception, sometimes, so like there was hair would be joined to somebody that's like three foot in front, but that's just because it's on a flat plane. So it's creating a little bit of work because we're fixing it and it will, but it will get better. Because the way AI is moving so much faster, that kind of stuff won't happen as often. So at the moment there's a bit of work around fixing AI images, but I think in the long run it does help.

Speaker 1: 19:18

When it's used in conjunction with the human, the retoucher, it can be really beneficial because you can end up with stuff that's that's you've got a lot more work out of the same amount of time that's good, because I think some creatives are feeling a bit threatened by it and I think there's kind of we forget that actually it's a tool, yeah, and if you use it again, if you use a tool correctly you should reap the benefits from it absolutely I think it's a lot like um.

Speaker 2: 19:48

When you look at things like um assembly lines, even robots come in and do certain parts of it, you still need the people there to make sure that the robots are going to do what they're doing. Maintain the robots so they can do what they're doing. Check what's happening out, because they're not going to be 100. So you still need that human interaction and I think especially especially in retouching and and those kinds of creative sides of things. It is not a person. It doesn't think like a human. It uses whatever it uses in the background. Yeah, I'm not an AI expert. All the models that it uses and how it thinks is built on logic and not on emotion. So you don't. I can look at an image and it may look technically perfect, but if there's no soul to it or no emotion in it, you'll see that. People will see that right away and you can tell an image that's AI, no matter how, because it's almost too perfect sometimes, so you need some flaws to make it feel like it's real.

Speaker 1: 20:49

So yeah, yeah. I wonder if consumers notice as well as us creatives who are kind of like, got an eye for detail because we all do, don't we? Yeah, what our job? So we go and see stuff and we're like, oh, that's glaringly obvious. Look, they've got like 17 fingers. I wonder if, like, consumers actually even notice because they're like passing by advertising so quickly.

Speaker 2: 21:14

I think that's a good point actually, because of the image that I fixed that had like a claw and it had a girl with four knuckles and three fingers and there was just, but there was all these little things. But it had made it through two stages of, uh, of review by the marketing agency and also then the client and that and that, like said, at that point it was too far that they couldn't really use it because it was due. But then every time when I spoke to my client she said every time she looked at it she found something new that was wrong with it. And then while we were having a call I also found stuff that was she's like, oh god, but it was all these little things. But yeah, you're right, probably not in that respect. If they hadn't noticed it, people, some people might have, but you look at things so fleetingly and so, like walking past the bus shelter, you probably wouldn't notice the fact that there were four knuckles and three fingers oh, oh.

Speaker 1: 22:06

I just I sometimes I wonder, like if I showed my grandma, if she'd notice do you know what I mean? Or like, would my mum notice, or you?

Speaker 2: 22:14

know I don't think and I like yeah, I don't think that they probably would, but I think that, in good conscience, creative people can't put that stuff out there, knowing that it's out there and you haven't done something about it put that stuff out there, knowing that it's out there, yeah, you haven't done something about it.

Speaker 1: 22:30

Yeah, I would feel like I mean I think I've done a shot before where, like we were styling, got the shot approved and then, when we looked back at the shot, my pins were still in on their side. You know, a bit like the when, you see, was it Game of Thrones? Somebody? Somebody had left like a starbucks, yeah, um, like uh, cupping or whatever, and it's like it's one of those innocent things, but it got we. We reshot it before. You know, but you think like, oh how, if I had not noticed how I had some, would somebody else have noticed? Because the ad didn't notice? You know, like, so would anyone have noticed? I think it was me being like, oh shit, when it came out, like, ah, my pins.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Well, I think. Well, yeah, there would have been that, definitely. I think as well as that, you know, because there will be people like us that are out there, yeah, and because there's a huge I mean social media for picking those things up is, as soon as one person saw and photographed it, it would be everywhere. So, whoever that client was that has their name along the banner or whatever that ad is or whatever.

Speaker 2: 23:34

That would just come back to them. So you actually, as much as people wouldn't notice it, you could probably get away with it, and some images probably do go out like that. As soon as it's picked up, it's going to go around and everybody will see it, and then you've got that sort of backlash. So you have to be really careful about that, and and so there's a thing about just looking for certain things that the really easy things to spot, because if you find one of them in an AI image, you'll probably find more things that you need to. You need to have a look at or at least it's a flag to look deeper at the image before really pushing it out to the clients and things.

Speaker 1: 24:08

So, yeah, yeah, what's the most ridiculous thing ai has replaced for you on um photoshop well it was.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Oh, what was I doing? Oh well, I was. So I was trying to put a car. I had a shot with some cars. I was trying to put it. The client said, oh, it'd be really great if we could have another car in the front. And I was like, okay then.

Speaker 2: 24:29

So I used and I used photoshop to ask for cars and I typed in I want a car facing this direction. Blah, blah, blah. And I was trying. It was really specific. The stuff it came up with, though like half the time they were facing the wrong way, they were sideways. I asked for like a car. I got a truck. Um, there's just some of them. Some some of them had like half the car. It was just some of that.

Speaker 2: 24:48

You, you have to be so specific and it lets you say, no, that's not good, no, that's not good. But I went through like 20 pages of this is not good, this is not what I've asked for, it was just. And then finally one was there and it worked and I could make it work. It wasn't, it was good enough that you could get away with it. But I think that's just. It's the getting. I've never had to have anything really big and except for that and I think if you're specific enough, you'll get close to what you want, but it's not. Those types of generative AI aren't good enough yet there are definitely programs out there that people use to create these fantastical worlds with these gorgeous people, with the, the elves and whatever that is. That is a whole other level of of ai generation and creation and editing, so that's. But you're paying for those programs, whereas in photo retouching you wouldn't use that kind of thing because it's way too much, it's not not what's needed, um, so yeah, that's probably that's probably the biggest one.

Speaker 1: 25:47

It's so, so funny. Like, I think, a friend of mine, she asked for a backdrop cleanup and it just put a cleaner in.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Just you know it was like there you go. I saw somebody posted one once and it said it was a photographer, and she posted saying that she'd asked for this person to be removed. So they removed them, but they put two feet coming out the bottom of the drapes behind like somebody was hiding. So then it just looked really creepy. So the person was gone, but somebody was sneaky and down at the bottom.

Speaker 1: 26:21

I love that, though that's the kind of like AI that I am here for. Yeah, she posted it with the little feet as well before she edited it back out again.

Speaker 2: 26:28

So, and that's the kind of like AI that I am here for. Yeah, she posted it with the little feet as well before she edited it back out again. So and that's the thing I think. Sometimes with AI you you can, even with the tools built into photoshop you can use the great removal tool and it gets rid of it, but actually then you have to do a few other things to then remove some of the artifacts that are left behind. So it'll get rid of, like most of it, but it won't get rid of everything and it won't look exactly right. Sometimes it's amazing, and then other times there's sort of more work and that's where you need that person to, or that human at the moment needs to be able to look at that and go.

Speaker 1: 26:57

That's still not quite right and that's where we kind of come in yeah, I mean, if she had have left the feet in, I think it would have been great, but um, I would have done it as an outtake.

Speaker 2: 27:08

I think I would have sent it to them anyway and just thought this is what I did. Look what happened.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Just give you option A or B.

Speaker 2: 27:17

Pre-beat or no?

Speaker 1: 27:21

So how do you find running your own business? Because I know that you're quite new to running your own business, so tell me how you find it. How are you finding it is?

Speaker 2: 27:31

this your first year? Yeah, so I left my job in April last year but I kind of didn't really start. I was really lucky I had I was working with a coach already when I left who has also done this so she was really really integral in getting me sort of set in the things that I needed, so things like insurance and websites and all these things that you don't think about and so I didn't really start pushing it till sort of July. But it's been. Do you know what? I've loved it?

Speaker 2: 27:57

I'd come from such a stressful job at that point when I left that this has been. Yes, it's stressful because it's new and I'm looking for clients and I'm creating content more content than I've ever created in my entire life, ever. But it's been really interesting and I've got good support with my family and I've built a really good community, I think, on LinkedIn. So I use LinkedIn mostly because I'm looking at working with other businesses. So I've I decided to really go through that avenue first, um and really sort of solidify that.

Speaker 2: 28:33

So it's been really interesting, um, and the journey of trying to learn what works and what doesn't, and that's still obviously completely still happening. Yeah, but like video, I've, I've. I've done a huge amount on video of me talking of talking about journey, but also doing like, while I'm editing, also doing before and after stuff, doing stuff. That's more just trying to find a mix of getting to know the person but also getting to know what we do, or what I do, and just using that kind of mix to get it out there, and in some stuff's been really great and other stuff has flopped completely.

Speaker 1: 29:09

so yeah, yeah, with you on that, with you on that, there's some things that you just like you think, oh, this will be great. And then there's something that, like, I put one thing out as a whim and it got 15 000 views or something, and I was just like, oh, oh, we've struck a nerve. But have I ever got that many views since? No, no, so you know, I think it. Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? When you're um nowadays, with marketing your own business, you have to create the content, and that's hard. If you've been trying to send invoices, chase, chase work, chase your accountant, you know, do it actually do the bloody work as well, and then you're doing all the other bits on top of it. There's quite a lot that comes. I think people forget that when there's a day rate, they go, oh, that's, you know, that's expensive. Well, actually no, because I'm 20 different people, so actually it's really cheap.

Speaker 2: 30:05

It's 20 different people. It's really cheap. It's 20. It's 20 different people. It's really cheap. It's including your, your vacation pay or your holiday pay. It includes your. It's got to include your national insurance, got to include your sick pay. It's got all those things that they would pay somebody normally to do. But actually it's probably still probably a little bit less than what they end up in the overall. If they look at how much they actually pay a person on top of their wage, it probably still is a little bit less. But because we don't have to have the sort of buildings and the all that kind of stuff it can be. But yeah, it just you're so many people and you have to be so many people and you have to learn so many skills.

Speaker 2: 30:40

And that's been the biggest thing is learning how to learning how to edit videos, learning how to do videos and not feel like I'm like just straight up and down and talking to the camera but put a bit of which the first videos are definitely like that, but like and then get editing them together.

Speaker 2: 30:58

And friend of mine that I met on LinkedIn that lives locally, we've done a, we got together and had a bit of a chat like this sort of, but we videoed both sides of it. So her camera, my camera and we just did sort of three sessions and we're sharing the videos back and we're going to use that for our content. But it was just us sitting down and talking about the fact that we'd started our job, our businesses, around the same time. We're kind of in the same sort of talked about what's worked for us and it was just a nice conversation. But using and thinking of doing that, like yeah, you're everything, you everything, every photo I take and every event I go to and every kid's thing or silly thing that happens, I'm thinking, oh, can I, can I use that? Would that go down well?

Speaker 1: 31:38

yeah, I mean I am. I'm gonna hold my hands up. I'm guilty of using a picture of me getting stuck in the mud. My friend took the other day, so I saw that one. That was great. She was wetting herself. I was like hun and her dog just kept doing circles around me while I was stuck.

Speaker 1: 31:55

But yeah, you do you have to think about like, how am I being? How am I being shown to the world? How do I want to be perceived by the world? How do I want my business to be perceived? How is this something that I can film? Is this something that I can make something of? What do I want my business to be perceived? Is this something that I can film? Is this something that I can make something of?

Speaker 1: 32:11

What do people want to hear? What do they want to know about me? What do they want to know? I like starting little conversations, like my LinkedIn post today saying about what I'm doing this week. I think people like to know that A they're not on their own in trying to juggle 20 million things. Be that, we can do as much or as little for our business as we want. You know, you don't have to be switched on 70 million hours a week you can, you're allowed to have downtime. But also I think it kind of makes you a bit more human. Yeah, because when I was on LinkedIn initially I was just like I'm free next week, anyone want to book me? And like it was like dead in the water, but. But now there's a bit of I hope a bit of personality in it. Probably a bit too much swearing for.

Speaker 1: 32:55

LinkedIn but anyway, and it's me all over, but I think you have to inject a bit of personality for people to kind of be attracted to you in order to book you. Does that make?

Speaker 2: 33:07

sense? Absolutely no. I think that when I first started, so when I was just starting to get back onto LinkedIn, I had sort of 280 something follower connections and those were from like when I first joined it and they're super random. I hadn't been on LinkedIn for a long time, so they were just random people. So I was like, okay, I'm going to get more connections. We set myself with my coach set sort of, you know, try and get this many connections, and it was a bit of a KPI for me to do. But now and that was fine at the beginning because it gives you a bit of reach but now it's looking at connecting with people who actually I'm I'm attracted to their posts.

Speaker 2: 33:43

I want to see their posts. I, you know, the more colorful the better actually for me. Like, I love the kind of crazy, more wacky kind of posts anyway, and I love the posts that have a ton of color. I love the posts about you know something random, like stuck in the mud. That's the kind of thing I love to watch. I like to read. I don't want to read about somebody's I don't know the best thing that's ever.

Speaker 1: 34:13

How amazing everything's been since I left. Oh, that's driving me mad. I know when everyone's like I never knew this, but now I do and I'm like oh, stop vomiting in my own mouth, Stop it, Because it's just like, it's just so fake.

Speaker 2: 34:30

It feels so. Yeah, so I just I would much rather like verbal diarrhea to just come out and somebody just be like, have a day of moaning and and or a day of just like. I had a day where after Christmas was like this is the first Christmas where I haven't had a proper job for more than 20 years really, and so I had a bit of a panic Because I was like Christmas last year to Christmas this year is very different For me feeling for me because I've always had, you know, my own autonomy, my own money and everything, and I still do, but it's different. So I had a little bit of a hiccup or a wobble. I called it, I put it, I put it out on the Monday.

Speaker 2: 35:14

But the amount of support that you get from that because the people that I'm connecting with now are so much more genuine and are in a similar type of freelance or self-employed or you know, I've got a lot of photographers that I'm connected to, a lot of retouchers I'm connected to and I've not met these people, not most of them. I've met a few of them, but even then some people are like, oh, we've been doing this 13 years and this year has been really difficult. So you know, it was just, it was a. Really, by the midway through the day I was like, oh, I feel better.

Speaker 1: 35:50

It's that almost like sense of community, because I think being self-employed can be one of the loneliest places to be, because you're so focused on your work and you're focused on trying to make ends meet and, like we just said, like having 20 hats to spin and wear, like I think it can feel really lonely. And then sometimes you look around and you go is this just me? Have I done something wrong, or is it other people? And every time I felt like that I've spoken to my friends or put something on LinkedIn and people have gone. Oh no, it's me too. Oh no, it's me too. And like, I think it's.

Speaker 1: 36:18

It's a roller coaster and I think I've been doing it too close to 15 years to want to remember how many years I've been freelance. But I think every time it's different. Like every winter is different, every I mean, I've moved. Like I was saying to you, we used to live in Peterborough, then I was in Manchester and now we're in Huddersfield. Well, um, in Homeforth.

Speaker 1: 36:41

And I think every time I move, I have like six months where, like work is a bit rocky, because I'm like I'm trying to get into somewhere new or you're trying something different, or people are like, oh, we won't book her now because she's an hour and a half drive away. I don't care about how far I live away, but, like you know, and I think it is difficult and I think it's, yeah, it's one of those like I think I've had my busiest January and February this year, for the first time in a decade, probably. Wow. And like Nath, my other half went hold on a minute. You're working. How many days in January aren't you normally only working like three, and I was like I know I'm equally as shocked, but I'm not going to say anything, I'm just going to get on with it because I don't want the universe to think that I'm ungrateful. But you do, you kind of just, and then I might have a quiet, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 37:32

March and April, yeah, but I just there's no tellings to it anymore and I've spoken about this before on the podcast but COVID really changed things for a lot of people, even though it's five years ago this year. It changed a lot of way people, the ways people booked people, the ways product is sent to them, the ways products made, the whole, the whole system got changed and unfortunately we're the end of the system, aren't we really like? We're styling it, photographing it, retouching it. Yeah, and it affects us, because then people book us two days in advance rather than two weeks in advance or whatever, and it's just going with that flow.

Speaker 1: 38:10

But, also it's kind of going. I think we all of us freelancers are slightly mad for wanting to be freelance because we add these stresses and rollercoaster rides to ourselves. But then having that slight little bit of like, oh shit, actually I need to go and find some more work on that kind of drive, that fire in your belly, means that you go out and you find stuff that you enjoy and actually get a better work-life balance to a certain extent too.

Speaker 2: 38:36

Yeah, no, I think. So. I think that biggest thing for me, because you know, my little boy's nine and I wasn't getting to go to the school stuff and I wasn't getting because I was working. I would drop off at school and then I'd get home for six o'clock and that was. You know, I did that every day and I just wanted to be able to go like, and I'd also just wanted to, you know, if, if I, if he was not well, I wanted to not feel guilty that I wasn't going to be able to go into the office that day or whatever that was, and there was always that little niggling bit.

Speaker 2: 39:03

So this, despite the fact that it's been a lot of work and it is still a lot of work because I'm not even a year in the difference in the stress levels. It's a different kind of stress and it's not a bad stress because it's has its moments, like I said, wobbles. But I know what I'm working towards, I know what I want to do, I know I love what I'm doing. I'd like I love talking. I'm really personable person. Once I'm more comfortable, once I'm comfortable, but it um going out and speaking to people and talking to them about what you do is a lot easier when you actually enjoy it and and you want, like I said you, the little. Yeah, okay, I need to find work, but you go out cause you find it, but you know you like doing it, so it's okay, cause you can, you're happy to go and do it my Mondays.

Speaker 2: 39:47

I don't wake up on a Monday now and think, oh God, it's Monday, I don't want to go to work. I don't think that because I know that I'm whatever I'm doing is I'm doing for me and and I can decide how much or how little I do. And that was really. That was really freeing. And I think as soon as I made the decision to leave, I was like, oh God, it's just the weight that came off my shoulders. I know it's gonna be hard, but it's. It's been such an interesting journey and I've met so many people on LinkedIn that I've then met in person. That's been really good. So, yeah, we really really interesting journey and I'm really excited about I feel like it's just starting to really go and the next year is going to be really good.

Speaker 1: 40:30

Yeah, I think that's it and having like a plan, or you know, I don't have a business plan anymore, but like it's just survive, I know, but I did.

Speaker 1: 40:41

When I first started out I was like, right, I want to earn this much, or I want to work with these people, and it just drives you forward and then you hit a point where you go, oh, okay, I'm a bit more comfortable.

Speaker 1: 40:53

Like, actually, this person, this client's like not paying me on time or this is becoming an issue. Okay, let's slow that down and let's pump up on a different side of work and you can kind of balance it out. And I think you're right as well. Like I really don't enjoy being penned in with a full-time job and I used to feel really guilty about needing to take two hours off to go to the dentist or whatever. And now it's like, right, well, I'm having this day off, I'm going to go get my haircut, go dentist, have a life admin day, and I don't feel guilty about it. I'm just like that is my day. Yeah, it's being done, that's it. And I think that freedom you're right, it's a different kind of stress to if you're full-time, but like the freedom in how you use your time is really nice yeah, and if you do take that time off and you end up with work that you need to do, you know you can put that time elsewhere.

Speaker 2: 41:44

You've got, you're at home, you're you're with your stuff. So I can. Because I work remotely, I can literally work at any point in the day for anybody anywhere. So if for some reason, I did have to do two, three hours, but I actually had work, I can just do those two, three hours in the evening and you're not stuck to those sort of traditional times of nine to five or nine or working longer than those hours and not getting that back, because I did that a lot when I was early in my career. I did a lot of eight o'clock at night just because it was so much easier to do stuff in the office between five and eight when there was nobody there. We did tons and my husband and I both worked at the same place, so we would just both do the same thing and then we'd go home. We didn't have kids at that point. No-transcript over and above, because I don't want to get into that habit yeah, that's a really difficult one as well.

Speaker 1: 42:59

So, like I've, years ago I used to work five days a week, six, seven days a week sometimes, and I'd just hammer it and then go, we'd take a two-week holiday and I'd be like I'm really ill, like no wonder why I'm really bloody ill, do you know? So I think you kind of, as you move through freelancing, you'll find what works for you and how many days a month works for you, how many days a week, how many hours. And it's different for for everybody. Some people cope on two days a week, some people love four days, some people are five. You know a colleague of mine just will work as many days as she can and she just like loves work, so why not? You know I can't do that anymore because I love my work, but, jesus Christ, I just get really ill.

Speaker 1: 43:43

So there's no point, you know, like there's no point buying myself out?

Speaker 2: 43:46

absolutely not, no, and I think that's the thing. You have control over your burnout now. If you want to.

Speaker 2: 43:50

You've got the.

Speaker 2: 43:51

The mental health side of things and the work-life balance side of things is now in full control, whereas before that stress of people you needing to be doing stuff for other people and that always needing to keep things going meant that it was relentless and in some places and I really liked it, I've I've had some really great jobs over the years and I've had some really horrible managers and really horrible people that I worked for that I just thought why am I doing this?

Speaker 2: 44:18

So I just got to the point that wasn't really like that at the last place, but I got to a point at an age that I don't want to have to think like that. I want to just be able to control what it is I'm doing and like what I'm. I want to like what I'm doing, like I want to actually do stuff that I'm trained and do for myself. But I know I can do as a career because I know that I can do it and I'm and I love doing it. So why not? Why wake up and think, oh, I'll go be an account manager again?

Speaker 1: 44:49

And that's not my, that's not my passion, yeah, but also like on the flip side, if you ever needed to, you know you can walk into a job like that again. That's, I think, the comfort almost of being freelance like, especially if you've had a career previously. That's slightly different. You know that, okay, I've got something I can fall back on.

Speaker 2: 45:04

It's fine, yeah, you know, yeah, absolutely, I know I can. There's lots of things and I've always been able to. That's never been an issue. It's getting jobs, it's just and and and being able to keep them. It was just loving them.

Speaker 2: 45:14

I just never, just never loved, loved what I was doing. I liked, I did a, I had a, did do photography for a while when my little boy was just about a year, and did product photography, and I had a friend who was running a website in the shop, so I used to do all of her photography and her website and things like that and that was fine, that was quite good. I liked that. It just wasn't. I wasn't in a place where I was, I knew how to market myself, whereas this time I've had I was so lucky that I was already working with a coach that had gone through it that she really helped, so that I'm in a position where I can now just I've just been able to go and sort of keep that going. Um, I didn't have that last time, so it just kind of fell flat on its face and then I went back into into work working for other people again.

Speaker 1: 45:57

So I think that's it. I think there's quite a um importance on coaches. Actually I've never had one, but I've seen friends have got them and like the um. But yeah, I think people the importance of having a coach and somebody to kind of just be beside you, going like, yeah, you can do this.

Speaker 2: 46:15

Like you know, cheerleader, you need somebody to cheerlead you while you're trying to get it, when you're getting through a transition like that it was. So she's such a calming person and she was really great at just sort of we would talk about whatever it was that was the issue, but or we would just, or she would give me, show me how to do stuff. She'd be like so just either use her knowledge, or she was just there as a sounding board and her, her the wealth of information, the type of coach that she was. She was so good at grounding me and, you know, getting a bit of a tizzy or having a bit of a wobble. She'd be like right, let's break this right down. And you know, and then I was and felt much better that way. So it made it a lot calmer and a lot more of an easy transition to to to doing this kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 47:03

So because I think as well, the jump from being full-time to being freelance is a massive. We should not kind of underplay this, because it is a huge jump, especially because, like you say, you've got a kid, you've got other responsibilities and it can be quite a scary thing and like to have somebody hold your hand like God, I can't. I'm I'm slightly jealous because I'm imagining myself with a business coach at 23 or 24 when I, when I went freelance, and the amount that I would have been able to do with a coach. I just fucked my job off with 500 quid in my back pocket, so you know it was was.

Speaker 2: 47:42

It was definitely good to have and, like I said, last time, it didn't work. So this time was, so she was just invaluable. And then and I do tell her, you know, when I got my first client, I text her and she called me back. She's like you can't just text me, that you have to. This deserves a phone call. And I was like um, so it was just, and so she's still there and she's still cheerleading and she's still, you know, commenting and engaging on linkedin and stuff, and she'll always be there as a as somebody to talk to if I need that.

Speaker 2: 48:09

And there's a lot of coaches and finding somebody who works for you and for coaches there's that whole sort of video thing and the content thing. And putting yourself out there is massive because you need to be able to work with the person. It's's less of an issue when you're more remote and you're more virtual, like this, than it is when you're talking to somebody weekly, daily, whatever that is. So it's a huge. Yeah, getting to know, selling the person is huge in that industry. But there are lots of them out there and there's lots of different ones and it's just finding the right one and I was just really lucky that my friend had used, had used her, and and when I spoke to her I was like, yes, yeah you're my lady.

Speaker 1: 48:49

Yeah, that's it. When you know, you know you're just like oh, yes, yeah, so a bit of a maybe more difficult question, but what do you find the downsides to having your own business, or the worst part of having your own business?

Speaker 2: 49:07

Well as it being within the year, is finding clients, finding new clients. It is starting to pick up and it's been. The last few weeks have been really great actually, and a lot of things have kind of come into play. And everybody says this, and I'm working with somebody to do on a visibility program so just getting yourself out there and doing stuff like podcasts and doing videos and doing anything that gets you out there, talking about what you do and getting people to know who you are, and I think that's finding that that's starting to. It's so slow.

Speaker 2: 49:36

When I left my job, I thought, oh yeah, I'll have something by the end of the year. And I did have a client by the end of the year, but nothing concrete like what you expect, like it was just quite naive, and I think everybody who does this is because you're going from one to you think, oh, that's months away, but it's not really that long. Months are not long, months are short, yeah, but I think that for me at the moment, that's the thing. But all of the engagement and all of the content and all of that is really starting to sort of gain ground, I think, and there's more and more people asking to connect with me, whereas it's always used to be me connecting with people. Now there's people asking to connect with me and when that started, a that, when that started to happen, I thought, oh, that's a good turn, because now you know, you know you're kind of getting out there and yeah, that's. I think that's the hardest thing the creating the content and then engaging and nurturing people in to become clients.

Speaker 1: 50:35

So yeah, sorry it's so rude. Yeah, I think you're right and I think then maintaining client relationships can be hard as well because things, again, as we spoke about, ebb and flow and circumstances change, sometimes finances change and you know, things do kind of have their own little river of flowing really, and you know also accepting that can be quite hard.

Speaker 2: 50:59

I found that quite hard, yeah absolutely I think that and that whole me thinking I was going to have, you know, regular income by the end of the year, and then getting towards the end of the year and thinking, okay then, but having those cheerleaders and having those people and that group of people that are either in your part of, if you're part of a networking group or whatever that is having those people there and, like I said, my friend Vic, that I've met on LinkedIn, who lives near me and we did these videos. Her and I started around the same time, so actually it's really good because she's a great sounding board, because we're kind of going through the same thing at the same time and I kind of liken having your own business or being freelance to having it's like your kid. Your own business or a free, like being freelance to having it's like your kid. So, having having had the kid, um, it's very similar because you spend a lot of time trying to nurture and trying to bring them up and trying to it just.

Speaker 2: 51:53

But everything takes and you feel like you're the only one doing something, especially with kids. You felt if you're, if you're a mother with one kid and there's no other children, you've never had them and you don't have a lot. I don't have a lot of family around because they're all in Canada. Um, so, having friends that had kids the same age, I was like is your kid doing this? They're like, yes, I'm like, oh, thank goodness, and it's the same thing in business, right? Like you said earlier you, it's good to know that other people are going through that same thing, and I think that's kind of where it sort of mixes together.

Speaker 1: 52:23

It's a similar idea yeah, and I think it's finding that community is such a powerful thing as well, and I actually have joined your women's creative collective on LinkedIn and I am buzzing for it because I, like you, I want to try and connect with more like creatives and just kind of like the podcast in itself has got its own little kind of like world, and then there's other I'm sure there's other people that I can connect with and kind of connect with the people in my little collection and collection. It makes me sound like I'm collecting Pokemon cards, but I think that's it. It's like having those networks mean the world and I'm really excited to see where you're, where this comes from. So where's this idea come from? Tell me? Tell me where it's so earlier in.

Speaker 2: 53:13

So I've been on my connecting, getting through LinkedIn, connect with everybody in the world, and I don't. It must have been early in the fall, so maybe september, maybe earlier, maybe august. Um, anyway, I saw a post from somebody I've got a lot of connections to for photographers and things, so this had come through as a second, and it was just a post from from somebody called henar and gona gomez henar gomez, sorry, um, and she posted it was her birthday and but instead of you know, talking about herself, she posted about 10 women on LinkedIn that she's connected to, that she or that she follows, that she really loved what they did and they were all creatives and some of them were people that I was also following and I just so went through the list. I thought that was really great. So I connected with her and I commented and I said I thought this is an amazing idea and a really sort of selfless thing to do on your birthday and really great to promote. And she got in contact and she said she'd had this idea of wanting to do this group and would I want to do it with her and I was like, yes, yes, I do, so that we started talking about it. We had a couple of calls, a couple of Zoom calls, about how we wanted it to work. We'd originally hoped that we could launch it before Christmas but it didn't quite work out. But we just want it to be a space and in the description, in the information, it says it all we want it to be a space where female or female identifying creatives can collaborate, can share stories, can do kind of what we've just done about. Oh, this would be really difficult right now and that kind of thing. But in a, in a space where there's a lot less judgment, I think is what we there's there's no judgment. There should be no judgment. That's that's the idea. But also we are then going to highlight every week we're every other week, if we get them in, we're going to highlight a new creative um. So last week we highlighted emily endeen.

Speaker 2: 55:04

She's a photographer, she's um based in the uk in a band she drives around. She takes the most amazing photographs of, especially, beaches, and and and um. She does down the south coast, southwest coast a lot, but she goes all over the place um and she does talks and she does um lots of interesting um workshops and things. So she was our first person and she does talks and she does lots of interesting workshops and things. So she was our first person and she was so happy when I asked if she would do it.

Speaker 2: 55:28

She's because I've been connected to her and commenting on her stuff for a while, so we have this kind of she kind of knows who I am in that way. So she was like, yes, absolutely, and I think we want to just do that, and so they we've asked for each person that we feature to then suggest two or three more people that we could then, and so hopefully it grows that community and and it's for not just visual creatives, we're talking about authors, copywriters, um, stylists, every anybody that's got job, wear or a passion, where what they do is creative and they just want that support. So I think, instead of hitting about 70 members at the moment, so we're that's good. Yeah, it's been a week, that's really good.

Speaker 1: 56:13

Yeah, because, like I think this, you know, when some people go like oh, it's only like 40, I mean I wouldn't be out, I just got 40 people in my house. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2: 56:24

like 70 is a lot yeah, well, I go through and just connect. I just invite any anybody that's on my um connections list, that's a creative, female creative. I just invite them and if they join, they join. If they don't, they don't. But it's there, um, and we just want people to. If, if two people collaborate and it works out for both of them and they both gain from it, then you know we've done what we set out to do really. So, yeah, that's the kind of aim behind it. It would be great for it to be big, but that's not what we're aiming for. We just want to help people.

Speaker 1: 56:58

I think it's a really good idea because I think people, especially nowadays, like strive on, like networks and strive the right word, I think so and like they kind of it helps. It helps you feel less alone, like we said before, and also like it puts you in front of people that maybe you wouldn't have necessarily been put in front of before and actually like having those little different connections where you might end up with an avenue of work from it or you might end up seeing somebody five people down the line that helps you out. Or, like you say, you collaborate together and then find out that actually you're like amazing together and suddenly run off in the sunset doing your own business together.

Speaker 1: 57:40

You know, the possibilities are endless, aren't, even if, even if the end, even if the bottom of it is just that people make friends out of it.

Speaker 2: 57:50

I think that's the thing. We just want it to be a place where people come and get to know each other. I want to I think I'd like to do a poll in a little, in a couple of weeks time, when there's more people, just to see who people are doing and what creative bit they're doing, just so that everybody else has a bit of an idea. Because you can have all these people but unless you go through and look at everybody, and if it gets bigger and bigger, that will become harder and harder is just so that people can understand what each other does and then, where they may be able to, may be able to benefit from that. But I want to be, we want them to share stories. We're trying to encourage people to post as well, um, and then that way it just becomes a little small version of of linkedin within within linkedin, where they can go and and hopefully benefit from it.

Speaker 1: 58:38

Yeah, I like I was like straight on it. I was like, yes, I am joining this, yes, I'm gonna be like hi, because I just thought like this is such a fantastic idea and I think there's just a wealth of female creatives out there who maybe that is so rude, coco, um that maybe just don't feel as confident or maybe, like feel like they need a bit of bit extra help or, you know, maybe don't really know where to look, or, and I think just that extra support is great and, like you say sometimes, well, years ago, linkedin used to be very corporate, very suited and booted kind of yeah, yeah, it wasn't the nicest place to be, but now I think it is a lot better, like a lot, lot better. Definitely, like I found now I found like my creative tribe on there. Yeah, it's a lot better.

Speaker 2: 59:33

I think that's it. You have to use it kind of the same as you use Facebook, in that you're targeting the people you want to follow. You get you, create your own what you're going to see by following the people that that you want to follow. You get you, you create your own what you're going to see by following the people that that you want to follow and seeing that content, because it won't shove too much of the stuff you don't want to see if you don't, if you don't re-interact with it. So it's if the algorithm works in similar ways to the others.

Speaker 2: 59:55

Um, but I think there's a and I always think this about networking as well, because you've got co-ed networking and that's absolutely fine. I've met lots of really great people at many networking events. But there's just a difference. When you go to sort of a female-led one and it would be the same if it was male-led, if you had an all-male networking, that would be really different to how they would be with the co-ed staff and then how women would interact. And it's just.

Speaker 2: 1:00:22

We're just sometimes different and it's having that space where you can feel like for people who maybe struggle in that kind of more corporate or struggle in that more. I don't know how to describe it. Like you said for LinkedIn, it just is sometimes can be a little bit intimidating, yeah, so this, we want this to just not be that at all like the opposite. Like you're in there, just feel free to ask anything. There's there's absolutely no judgment whatsoever and all we want for everybody is to is to make everybody's jobs better, to make everybody, you know, raise them all up, really yeah, I like it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:56

I think it's a great idea. I think I'm also part of the freelancer tea room discord as well, which is another great one. I will happily send you the link, actually, but that's really helpful as well. Lots of different pages in there and stuff of like you can promo your work, and Chris who set it up has actually been on the podcast, but he's done it on a similar vein of like everyone's a freelancer. There's lots of different folks in there, you know designers, photographers, researchers, everything. I think like there's only a handful of a stylist, but like it's nice that everybody goes oh, how would you deal with this? And like you go. Like oh, okay, I don't feel like a dickhead like.

Speaker 1: 1:01:40

I am not overreacting, that is the right way to deal with it. But it's nice just to have that, that comforting community. But again, I don't use that probably as much I'm not. Do you know what my downfall is? When I'm super busy, I forget to use my social medias properly, and then I think I just don't get time.

Speaker 2: 1:01:58

I think that's the same with a lot of people, especially when you're freelancing or you're single ownership, like you, because what you're doing is making you the money and then all of a sudden the 80% of what you do should be your marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:02:12

But when you're spending 80% of what you're doing, doing what you do, you don't have that time left. So where that balance is is really difficult and that's where, yeah, having a guess, having a marketing plan which I loosely have a marketing plan in my head, but it tends to be pretty much day to day I have a bit of an idea of what I want to say through some weeks and then, and then I'll forget. But I try and do it ad hoc because I think it's more natural or more more authentic that way and sort of what's happening on the day and if I happen to be editing and I can show it, then I'll video it editing and I'll do some before and afters and stuff. But yeah, it does make it more difficult and I think at the moment I still have the time to be doing the higher end of the marketing side of things. But I want to get to a point where actually that's more difficult because obviously then I'm doing a lot more work.

Speaker 1: 1:03:07

Yeah, yeah, I think as well. Scheduling is a godsend, absolute godsend, but I find it I don't know if you find this as well I find it difficult to share my work because I sign a lot of NDAs so I can't or, like you know, you're not allowed to film in the studios because there's certain ways things are being lit like I mean, if you're a good photographer, you know how stuff's lit anyway, but you just can't, I can't share it, and then I'm like I can't even share, like a BTS of me now you know, scooting around on my stall putting my magnets in because I'm just not allowed, and then I'm like, what the fuck do I share?

Speaker 1: 1:03:39

yeah, and then there's that balance of like I can't share too much of clients because you don't want someone else to poach your client. So it's a very difficult balance.

Speaker 2: 1:03:49

I think that the NDA side of things I haven't had yet, but I'm sure I will do at points, because there are going to be stuff that can't go out. What I tend to do is in my conversations with clients or potential clients is the understanding that when the work is available, or when the work's out and available to be used, that I can then use it as. But there will probably be a delay there and there has been delays, so there'll be two, three, four, two, three months, four months, whatever. That is from when the campaign is created to when it then launches. Once it's launched, the I I try to make it that I can use that stuff, but it is up to the client and then I just make sure that that's agreed at the beginning as to whether or not I'm going to be able to use it. But I haven't had to do the nda thing yet but, um, I know, I know it'll come.

Speaker 1: 1:04:38

So yeah, and I think like, um, the difference probably is because you're remote and I have to go in studios, I have to sign contracts that say like I'm not allowed to film or like you know, which is fair enough, I get it, in this day and age, like they have to be careful over their kind of intellectual property, I guess.

Speaker 1: 1:04:54

But, yeah, it's nice. Then, when I I was on a shoot a couple of weeks ago, the day my tire went and the photographer took some behind the scenes of me actually styling, which was really nice. So, because I don't very often get stuff well, I do, but it's not stuff we can share it's mostly like my face looking really weird we're not, you know, holding up a t-shirt, you know just my eyes peeking over. So I think it's really nice when you are, when you do have stuff that you can share, like that. But I think it's it's so hard because I was trying to do three posts a week on my Instagram and it's just too like I just don't have enough content for it, and then you feel bad because you're just rehashing old stuff, but it's like I just don't have the content there, I think it's interesting because I heard um, so I've I've started doing stuff on Instagram and I've kind of stopped.

Speaker 2: 1:05:44

I'm gonna. It was just too many, too many at once, I couldn't do them all. So really concentrating on LinkedIn because it's a business to business and then also putting tends to put, I tend to put the same stuff out on Facebook because that's slightly different audience. But if I don't have enough content and the videos are now getting good enough that I can pull in old videos and stuff, but I will just put out a similar post or something I was thinking of, but I'll just pull something old.

Speaker 2: 1:06:11

The thing is, and what I've been told a couple of times now, especially on LinkedIn, people only see so little of what you do that you could put the same post out every day almost and only a very small number of your connections will actually see that post, that same post, so you can rehash stuff because they're most likely didn't see it the first time. So it may feel that and this is a huge thing for me that it kind of I took it in, I was like, oh right, so it may feel like I'm putting out the same things because I don't do anything massively different. I retouch in and I was like, oh right, so it may feel like I'm putting out the same things because I don't do anything massively different. I retouch photos and sometimes I put them together and sometimes I just clean them up, like there's not a huge amount of content there. But just knowing that people aren't always seeing it means that I feel like I'm not repeating myself, because I felt like I was repeating myself all the time with everything I put out.

Speaker 2: 1:07:03

And I think now, knowing that very few really, in the grand scheme of however many millions of people are on these platforms, so such a small number of people see them and then don't really see.

Speaker 2: 1:07:14

They may see the second one but not the first one, or they may see the third one. And you know, I don't feel bad saying the same things over and over again now and kind of having that in the back of my head. So I do still try to make it a little bit different and I think, in the terms of the not being able to show what I'm doing, if I can't show what it is that I'm retouching, I'll sometimes do videos over my shoulder of me retouching and just like a small bit of my screen, just like a small bit of my screen so they can see what the the drawing pad and my welcome tablet and they can see what I'm doing with it, so that the process is still kind of there. It's just not. They're just not seeing the image itself and then when that's allowed to be out, I can put more emphasis on the before and after stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:07:56

So yeah, I think that's it. Like there's been a few videos of me like painting props in my house. You, you know, like just like I've got to make a teenage mutant Ninja Turtle background, there's me cutting stuff out, you know. But then, like those jobs become, they're few and far between and then all of a sudden they come in clusters and then I'm like, right, so now I've got loads of content but it has to spread out for a year.

Speaker 1: 1:08:23

Yeah yeah, yeah, it just is. But I think I'm trying to share stuff. But yeah, like you say, it's difficult, isn't it? Especially because I'm so chatty, I'm like, oh God, do people really want to hear me yapping on? The answer is probably yeah, but anyway, yeah, I think it's. It's finding that striking that balance, isn't it where you're not taking too much of your time doing it? Yeah, like, say, an hour of your week and scheduling it out, and then you know commenting and whatever, but it, yeah, it's difficult. So I admire that you're doing like so much and that or the video and everything.

Speaker 2: 1:08:57

like god, girl, I mean while I'm, while I have the time to do it, I'll do it and there will there will hopefully be fingers crossed there will hopefully be a time when that is more difficult, and then that's that's a good problem to have, because, yeah, you know, then it's working, but it's then trying to keep that up so that when it does lull, you can yeah, then got, you can then go back into it and be like, okay, or you're, or you're filling the lull before it happens and yeah, and that's the, the balance, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 1:09:24

yeah, that's the thing, because somebody said to me it might have been Zara, actually, um, but she said you can tell when all the creatives are quiet because LinkedIn goes crazy. And I'm like, oh, I feel called out. And then I was like, actually, no, this is so true, this is so me, and like, but it's true though, because you get busy and then you just think, but I'm trying to post that at minimum like once a week on LinkedIn anyway, because, same as you, I think it's powerful. I think there's people, there's plenty of jobs that are coming up on there. Yeah, it's just, I feel like I'm helping my network as well. I just put comment in for my network. Now, I don't like tag people's names because it gets a bit of a like piranha feast. So I'm just like I'll comment for my network and then, yeah, if people see it, then that's all I mean if I can help, yeah, this thing, if I can help somebody by just reposting a job post, or if I.

Speaker 2: 1:10:12

There's a couple of people I've been following or have been connected to who have been struggling. So if I see anything I think is there that way, I'll kind of pass it over to them or at least, like I said, do comment for my network. But because there is a lot of stuff and it's just finding the right people and there's a lot of people out there just watching, yeah, it's just lurking, as they say, yeah, um, and and those are the people that just kind of come out of the woodwork one day and you're like, oh, wow, yeah, so yeah that's, that's yeah you need to talk to those ones.

Speaker 2: 1:10:41

They're the ones you're really talking to, because the people that are you're talking to all the time kind of know, but you're talking to the people who are just watching you and waiting for the time when they either need you and or can afford you yeah, yeah, that's true as well.

Speaker 1: 1:10:53

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there's plenty. Yeah, there's plenty of people who who are like that. I think like I had somebody message me asking me if they can come and work for me and I was like I that this is great, but I am not in a position to pay somebody else so, unfortunately, this is a no on this occasion yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:11:13

I was like oh. And then you're like, because of my way my brain works, is like, oh, could I do an agency? And I was like, don't be stupid, I just don't have enough time for this that's a whole other thing.

Speaker 2: 1:11:26

Is employing somebody? There's like all sorts of other stuff you've got to do for that yeah, I was like I don't have that.

Speaker 1: 1:11:32

I've got enough gray hair as it is. Yeah, I was like Jesus.

Speaker 2: 1:11:39

Yeah, no way, no thanks not at this moment, no.

Speaker 1: 1:11:42

So what are your goals for the future? What's your kind of what's on your vision board, if you will?

Speaker 2: 1:11:50

well, I've been doing a few of this. Actually, I've had a couple of interesting calls recently. We're looking at that. So really immediate is I just want to be putting back into what I was doing before. So you know, my husband's been really great at supporting and taking over the costs and luckily we're in a position where that's the case, so he can take over the costs of the house. So initially I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to just support myself the way I was supporting myself before. But actually I'd like to be able to.

Speaker 2: 1:12:19

I think I just my overall aim is to just really enjoy what I'm doing, know that, choose the hours that I want to work and know what those are and just help people make their lives better, like make their businesses better. So I would love to. I'd love to work for small, lots of small businesses, but obviously that's a little bit harder because small businesses struggle Like I would struggle with having enough money to do these kinds of things. So that's fine, but I'd love to be able to do that kind of stuff for, say, charities and stuff as well, so be in a position where, yes, yes, I've got the income that I can then spend some hours of my week doing some pro bono or free work for charities that will help them promote them a bit and that kind of thing. So everything I want to do. I don't have grand plans to make millions of pounds, because as a retoucher that's never gonna happen because there are so many, there's only so many hours in the week that you can spend retouching photos, so you're never going to be unless you create an agency with loads of staff. That's just not going to happen and I don't want that. I just want to be comfortable.

Speaker 2: 1:13:23

I want to be able to provide the way we were providing. I want to be able to. You know, we want to be able to go on the holidays that we go on. It's all those kinds of small things. But I never thought when I was younger. When I was younger, I thought I was going to live in the city in a condo um, have no kids and probably not get married. But I now live in the countryside with a child. We have a massive garden. This is a complete opposite, but it's turned out to be the thing that I wanted. I guess the most is the same kind of upbringing I had. I just want to be able to provide that for my family and enjoy it and have a little garden office down at the end of the garden.

Speaker 1: 1:14:00

That's what I want.

Speaker 2: 1:14:00

I've got a space all like it's there ready. I even photoshopped an office into the corner so I can look at it and be like that's what I want.

Speaker 1: 1:14:12

That's a good idea, though I'm all here for like vision boards. I did one and it's actually on the background on my phone so I can see it like every day. But yeah, I think our versions of success are similar. Like I, like similar to you just want to have a nice life. I think there's something quite gentle and humble about that, actually, because, like having a nice quality of life, making sure you've got roof over your head, food in your belly, you can go on holiday, do the odd things that you want to do I think we don't need to stress ourselves any more than that, do we really, not? Really?

Speaker 2: 1:14:49

and there's there is a there's. Yeah, like you said, there's something very humble about that. I think it's something very authentic and calming. And just, you know, if you spend, I've spent too many years working for other people, some of which, like I said, I love, some of which was not that great, but I just want to work for somebody, I love somebody, I like me, but doing something I like and for a reason that I like. So I don't need to be. You know, I've got aims, I've got financial goals, I know what I'd like to make, but I'm not beholden to that and actually there's, there's, I've got a lower level that I'd be just as happy to have, and, uh, and I can see that and that'd be just fine. So you know it's not. Yeah, I don't have any grand aspirations. I just really want to. If I can help other people make their business, push their businesses forward, that's, that's the best thing.

Speaker 1: 1:15:40

So, yeah, yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm with you, I'm agree with you and I think it's, yeah, what a nice way to have a a nice work-life balance as well. And you know, oh, I so, I so hope you get that shed in your garden, that garden office.

Speaker 2: 1:15:56

It's, it's um, we've been talking about it because we can. Yeah, we've been wanting to put a garden, uh, summer house, down there anyway. So the it's been earmarked for some kind of building, but now it's changed into that's got to be where I go and I've got all these like plaques. I've got my old, old license plates from my car in Canada which I brought over that had the way they do them. It came out and it said BTH, so it was almost like my name, so I've kept them. So I want to put them up. Like I have an idea of what I in my head, of what it's going to look like well, so I've got that on my computer that I can pull up whenever I'm needing some inspiration.

Speaker 1: 1:16:35

So, yeah, I love it. I love it um. So I've got one, one final question for you. Answer it whichever way you see fit, but, beth, what inspires you in?

Speaker 2: 1:16:47

in general, I think, well, what we were just saying enjoying what you do I I think that too many of us do stuff spend our entire lives doing something. You'll do a degree and then you'll not do anything to do with the degree. I mean, I've been quite lucky that I have and as much as I worked in photo retail for a long time, so I wasn't actually taking the photos and I did production, photo production and I did account management and things they were all in within the industry, so I did use my degree to a degree, to a degree. But there's people who go through and they'll do a university degree and never use it because they end up on a job and then they end up down this path and they end up doing something that actually they didn't really want to do in the first place. And I just don't want to do that.

Speaker 2: 1:17:29

I think I want to be able to spend the next however many years I have left, enjoying what I do and enjoying the place I'm doing it in and have the flexibility to choose what that's going to be. And I think I want to be able to show, I guess, my little boy that you can be and do whatever you want, and you can still be 46 years old and decide that you're going to totally change your career and go out on your own, and I think that that's something that is beneficial for him to see to that you know you're never beholden to one thing, and if you decide to go down one path, it's not the last. You don't have to stay there. You can go off and do something else if you really want to. So I think that's really important for kids, especially nowadays, to understand that it's you know, it's not a set in stone and you can pretty much do anything yeah, yeah, I think like my parents were like their parents told them that once you're in a job, that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:18:31

And then my parents told me, like you can change if you want. And now like we're like, oh, try a bit of that, I'll try a bit of that, try a bit of that. See what happens.

Speaker 2: 1:18:41

Yeah, and I think our kids are like the next generation of the same I think it's good, I think it's important because if they're, they're happy to try something and then try something. And then a lot of people find, especially parents of my parents who struggled. My dad struggled with this massively because he was, you know, the career guy and you know, you do your things and then you have your hobbies and that's fine. But I changed my job quite a bit and my one of my sisters just love her to death. She's had lots of different things and he it stressed him out. Why is it? My little sister did everything kind of like this, but the other two of us were like a bit flighty and he's going. Oh god, he couldn't, he just couldn't, he couldn't, um, he couldn't reconcile all of that change in his head.

Speaker 1: 1:19:23

But yeah, yeah. He's like how are you girls still going? What do you mean?

Speaker 2: 1:19:28

yeah, exactly, oh god, you're not gonna. Oh, because he thought when I left my first degree, I know I had two years between my two degrees and he thought I'd never go back to university, which I was always planning to.

Speaker 1: 1:19:38

But those two years really stressed between between doubts it's funny, isn't it, what perceptions our parents put onto us as well, and my expectations they put onto us. It's quite um. It's funny when you're an adult, like adult, when I feel like a more adulty, adult, yeah, and then you look back on it and you're like, oh yeah, of course they were like my age, like of course they had put these expectations on me, like yeah, I'm trying really hard not to put those same things because they are in my head, like I can hear my dad, so I try really hard not to put those then on.

Speaker 2: 1:20:12

I don't want that to be the case. I want him to be able to choose what he does and be who he is and, you know, do whatever he wants. So if he doesn't want to go to university, he doesn't go to university, like I'm never going to force him to do that, whereas my dad was like, oh my god, you've got to go yeah university.

Speaker 2: 1:20:27

It's not how you do things, yeah, but yeah. So I think just yeah, showing being able to do what you want and showing the next generation the best way of doing it, hopefully.

Speaker 1: 1:20:37

Yeah, it sounds like you're doing a fantastic job. I have to say I also am very jealous of your hair. I will say this before we close off the episode, because your hair is bright pink and I'm here for it. I love it. Now I'm going to want to do mine, even though I said to you before I cannot handle the mess of dyeing my hair again my bath is permanently pink.

Speaker 2: 1:20:57

We bought a brand new bath mat the other day and it's pink and it will be pink now forever, because it's just the first time it washes. It's just pink. So yeah, just have to know that nothing white in the bath is gonna stay white, it will just be yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:21:13

That's it. Uh well, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for sharing your story and um, I hope that everything goes the way you wanted to this year. I hope you get that garden office.

Speaker 2: 1:21:24

I am rooting for you, I know. Thank you so much and it was really great to be able to talk about these things. I think it's nice to share stories and they can be very different from everybody else's, but you know, somebody is out there thinking, oh yeah, that's what I needed to hear. So, yeah, thank you very much for having me. It was lovely.