How to create your own career luck with Mel Barfield

Mel Barfield: So, my advice to anyone who’s feeling a bit like stuck in the sludge at the moment in their career is to just look at what is adjacent to what they already do and start upskilling and kind of sideways and diagonal directions, because you don’t have to just be one thing anymore.

Rachel: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives.

Lynne: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

So, Rach, do you consider yourself a lucky person?

Rachel: I sort of do, but also, I know that there’s way more to it than just thinking, I’m lucky. My dad was a big fan of saying, the harder I work, the luckier I get and he still says that to all of us. That’s really stuck with me. Perhaps why I’m a complete workaholic, but I do think that luck is more about what you’re doing and how you’re putting yourself out there and how visible you are.

Also, I do believe in optimism and how optimistic you are about what is coming to you and what you can bring to you. That’s my ‘woo woo’ belief on luck. What about you? I imagine you’re going to say no, you don’t believe in it.

Lynne: No, I don’t really. But I also think it’s about working hard and the whole being right person at the right time.

Rachel: Right place.

Lynne: The right place at the right time. That’s it. Think you can’t always choose the right time because you don’t know that.

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: But you can usually be in the right place.

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: I think I’ve worked hard to be in the right place and that’s made me lucky.

Rachel: You do that because you are always doing face to face stuff, more than anyone I know. So that puts you in the right, in the room with the right people.

Lynne: Sometimes it’s not always face to face. Sometimes it’s just being, reading the right things, being in the right places and the right chats. I guess so. I do a fair bit of face-to-face though, but I’m lucky I live in a big city, so I can do that.

Rachel: But I do think luck is a really good topic because so many writers around us are going through huge change, especially with AI and we have the amazing Mel Barfield on to talk about luck and how we can bring more luck into our lives. She also has a background as a career’s advisor and an award-winning copywriter. So, she’s got both sides of that.

Lynne: Both sides of that, which is great because Mel is a managing partner at Copy or Die Copywriting Agency, which is quite famous in the UK.

Rachel: Very famous.

Lynne: Which she is from, and she’s also got a podcast too that we’re big fans of, which is the Indie Business Club podcast. She’s a columnist for Freelancer magazine. We had Sophie, who was the former editor on the pod a while ago. So, it is a small world, the freelancing world, sometimes.

Rachel: Very small.

Let’s get Mel on to give us all her get lucky strategies in a non-sexy way. Welcome, Mel.

Lynne: Welcome.

Mel: Whoa, hang on. It can be sexy. It could be sexy.

Rachel: I was thinking get lucky. I mean, oh dear. That came out

Mel: Not in the Pharrell Williams way. I get what you mean. I get what you mean.

Lynne: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: Oh, thank you Mel, for coming on. Before we get into the luck, tell us a little bit about your career, particularly how you went from careers advisor to being a copywriter and a bit about your agency because that’s a good story too.

Mel: So, the careers advisor to copywriter switch was, there was a bit in the middle where my husband, this was down to luck or happenstance? Actually, my husband’s work moved location while I was pregnant, so we moved across the country, and it meant that I didn’t have a job to go back to.

We decided to kind of just see how it went. Just look at whether we could survive on one income. As I was raising our daughter, we could, but I got quite bored and needed some mental stimulation. So, hop, skip and a jump from that to working as events and community engagement coordinator at the local council here where I live and I did a copywriting course as part of my work. I’ve always been really keen to upskill and learn as much as I can about what I’m doing, and that course was just incredible. I loved it.

Lynne: Changed your life?

Mel: It changed my life.

I’ve described it before as like my brain cracked open and angels and rainbows came out. It was just this real like revelatory moment of this is what I should be doing, this is what I’m good at. And then you mentioned Sophie from Freelancer Magazine around that same time she launched the Kickstarter for Freelancer Magazine and that was the first time I thought, oh, maybe I could do this as a job. I’ve never had an employed role as a copywriter. I went straight from – I did writing in my previous role, but it wasn’t copywriting. I went for it and went freelance and never looked back.

Rachel: Wow.

Mel: And luckily, not luckily, but because of my relationship with Sophie, I then was asked to become columnists at Freelancer Magazine after about a year of the, the magazine being around and it was through a place like Twitter – may it rest in peace – I met Dave, who I now get to work with at Copy or Die.

Rachel: Wow. Serendipity all round. Well, I just want to go back a bit to the career’s advisor thing because. Lots of people who are job seeking or you know, don’t have work, think there must be luck involved. Did you see that? What patterns did you see in people that you were advising and people who perhaps blocked their opportunities?

Mel: Well, most of the work I did as a careers advisor was with young people. So, they were at the very beginning of their career and the things that would get in their way in which I think is kind of different to how the barriers that adults face was the expectations of other people.

I think when you’re young, the expectations of your parents, your teachers, your peers, that has a huge impact on what you consider to be a relevant and open opportunity of something that you can go and do. Whereas I think when you get older, it’s the expectations of yourself that I think that that then becomes what, oh, I couldn’t, I could never do that. It’s too late for me to do that, people like me don’t do that. So, I think when you’re young, it’s other people’s expectations that really, and geography’s a massive, massive one. It’s not such a massive barrier now because obviously we have remote working. We can talk to people on the other side of the world as we’re doing right now.

But I think in terms of like blocking your own opportunities, the mindset side of things, I think people often think it’s too late for them to change. When they’re adults and they’re looking at their career options and there’s also a stat that, I can’t remember the exact figures, but there’s research to show that women in particular won’t apply to a job if they don’t hit a really high percentage of the requirements of the job. Whereas men will – don’t want to make it about men and women, but men will have the confidence to apply, even if they only match, say like 50% of the job description. They’ll be like, oh, well I’ll just put in that application. And I think as women especially, we need to make sure that we are not opting out of opportunities when actually other people would. Men might go for that job, but women wouldn’t. So, it’s that expectations of ourselves, I think as people are further into the workforce.

Lynne: I do. I’m not a big believer in luck but I do think it’s interesting how you’re putting yourself forward for the right opportunities and just being in the room. But also, I think we’ve all seen people that want to do something and they’ll say, well, when I get a chance, I’ll sit down and I’ll spend a week doing a website, or I’m going to spend a day doing this and they’ve got these whole, I guess, expectations about what they’re going to do and instead of just either doing it or making it all so hard, or also perfect.

Mel: Is that thing of, done is better than perfect.

Lynne: Exactly.

Mel: You actually, Lynne, you mentioned when you were doing the intro, you talked about right place, right time, but you also, you kind of said, all right, person and actually, I think it is all three. I think you were right actually. Good, good. It’s about being in the right place, the right time, but also knowing the right people and having, if you’re surrounded by people who have been in the same job for years and don’t have any ambition to, or motivation to kind of step outside of what they’re doing, then that can, that can really rub off on, on you and so I think, putting yourself in situations where you are talking to people who are already doing the job perhaps that you want to be doing. That’s where Twitter was brilliant for that kind of thing, those casual conversations, and you can still have those casual conversations on other platforms, it’s just not quite the same.

But the internet is a wonderful thing. You’ve got access to so many people; you’ve got access to YouTube videos. You can access people speaking about the kind of work that you want to do. And I think that’s a way for people to start, like I did with Freelancer Magazine, back in that early on, like starting to see myself as someone who could do that. I think we can feed our brains so much useful information to try and change our, shift our mindset a little bit about what’s possible for us. But if it’s about like learning or setting up a website just splitting it into little chunks. Just making your goal, your things.

Instead of thinking I need to make a whole website, make it that, oh, I’m going to register a domain this week and then next week I’m going to decide on my colour palette and like make, if you break things down into little chunks, then it’s much more likely to actually happen instead of having this gargantuan goal or get someone else to do it – outsource.

Lynne: It’s interesting. One of the things I think, and we’ll talk a bit about luck, but when you’re talking about the mindset thing, one of the things a lot of our listeners are former journalists. And I think journalism particularly, and particularly print journalism, has been in sort of a bit of a downward spiral, and I think that has inhabited people’s mindsets, like they are quite negative about opportunities and everything.

I don’t see – you are coming from the copywriting world, which is a lot more positive. And I think that that’s an interesting, I certainly see that with a lot of journalists, that they feel it’s all too terrible and it’s not getting anywhere. Do you find that?

Rachel: And they feel unlucky maybe, that they’re not getting anywhere?

Mel: I think that one of the things that is really valuable to people nowadays, now more than ever, if you’ll forgive me sounding like ChatGPT, is people have the opportunity now more than ever to do a little sideways shift. So, lots of copywriters I know used to be journalists and a lot of copywriters I know used to be teachers actually as well. We’ve got the opportunity now to kind of shift and also become multi hyphenated in our careers. My advice to anyone who’s feeling a bit stuck in the sludge at the moment in their career is to just look at what is adjacent to what they already do and start upskilling sideways and in diagonal directions because you don’t have to just be one thing anymore and the more offers you have. And that sounds counterintuitive because everyone in the freelance world previously would be like, niche down. Do be known for one thing. It feels too dangerous to do that nowadays, I think there’s benefit in having…

Lynne: Too risky.

Mel: Bit too risky. And so, because all it takes is one piece of software or one new technological advancement and you could be replaced. I think that’s where two things are the case. It’s useful to have a bit of a spread of skills of what you’re good at and also really, really important to build your personal brand and I’m using air quotes as I say that because it’s a phrase that a lot of people find, blah. But if you can build your authority in the space that you’re in and get known for doing what you do, that goes just so far. I cut like immeasurably far in kind of securing the longer-term work that you might be looking for.

Lynne: So, we should get back to luck because when you pitched us, you wrote that people often think of some mystical, magical force. But tell us why you want to debunk that.

Mel: Well, I don’t want to take away anyone’s joy and magic and sensitive.

Lynne: Fair enough.

Mel: I think when we think about it like that, it, we remove our own agency in the situation. We become passive observers just being kind of like floating along the river of life to use a very cheesy analogy. And I think if we think of it as something that we don’t have any control over, then we are just – it’s something that’s done to us instead of something that we can actually go out and get ourselves.

So, the reason I want to debunk it is because there’s a book actually by Richard Wiseman called The Luck Factors, and he identified these four different factors that lucky people tend to do and behave this way. So, there’s create notice and act upon chance. So, to create those opportunities, you need to be like you, Lynne, going out and meeting people. Putting yourself out there and increasing your surface area for luck.

Noticing and acting upon chance. Lucky people tend to be more observant. I talk about it as like something winks at me. I just can’t stop thinking about it. It happened with Freelancer Magazine, with the Kickstarter. It just kept on winking at me. I was like, there’s something in this. And that’s not your gut telling you that something’s worth following. And people who are lucky tend to act on that, those lucky hunches. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as humans. We’ve been honing those instincts for hundreds of thousands of years. So, we know in our gut if something’s good or bad. And I think we’ve kind of stopped listening to our gut. Quite often people will ignore red flags, and they’ll even ignore green flags and think, oh, well that’s, other people do that, but it’s probably not for me.

There’s a couple of other things that lucky people tend to do. They turn bad luck into good. So, if something bad happens, unlucky people might attribute it to the fact that it, that’s just their luck, you know? Oh, well that was always bound to happen because it’s just my luck.

Whereas lucky people will look at what their part in the situation was and what they can learn from it. And it might be that something horrendous happens that you could never have changed, like no matter how you acted leading up to it. But you can still learn from that horrible situation and take some of that learning forward into your life.

Then lastly, lucky people. I don’t want to be a mindset wanker, but lucky people do expect good things to happen. So, they go into situations with that mindset of like, this is going to be great and then when you do that, your body language and your attitude is more attractive to other people. So, you go into a networking session thinking this is going to be great. You are much more; you are somebody that people want to come and talk to. Whereas if you go into situations kicking your feet around and going, oh, this is going to be horrible. I don’t want to do this. Then you’re giving out this negative energy that isn’t going to make people want to come and talk to you necessarily.

It’s not about being a bouncy extrovert, it’s just being kind of open and going into situations expecting that it’s going to go well.

Rachel: What you’re saying is basically we can engineer our own luck in a sense, and what you said about something bad happens. I have found throughout the years, because I’ve been freelancing for over twenty-five years, if I lost…

Mel: Congratulations.

Rachel: I know.

Mel: That’s a good inning.

Lynne: Pretty good.

Rachel: It’s great. Oh my God.

Mel: You must be really good.

Rachel: Well, you know, like everybody, I’ve lost clients. I’ve had retainers taken away from me. All sorts of things have happened, and I started to have, when something bad happened, I would take a day to just have a wallow and be miserable about it.

The biggest one that ever happened was when I lost my movie reviewing gig, and I’d had it for ten years and they took it in-house.

Mel: Oh, that’s a long time.

Rachel: The magazine took it in-house, so I wallowed and wallowed over that and was really sad. But then I thought, what door is this opening? And I think that’s what I was saying at the beginning. I have a slight little chink of optimism where I have to try and look for what is happening here that, why is this happening and what door is it opening. So, I’ve always tried to think that.

Mel: Love that.

Rachel: And it opened a door for me to do heaps of feature writing and travel writing I wasn’t able to do before because I was always in a movie theatre. So, I had a few years of really awesome travel writing before I got married and had a kid. It was great.

Mel: That’s awesome. Well, I’m certainly not saying don’t wallow because I think there’s a lot to be said for having a little wallow and you’re allowed to feel a little bit sorry for yourself, but it’s then what you do next. That changed because you could have stayed wallowing and not ended up seeking out those other opportunities. So, well done.

Rachel: Yes. Pat myself on the back.

Lynne: I think we’ve all met those sorts of people who feel they’ve been unlucky for years. How can you shift that mentality? Where should you even start?

Mel: Well, it’s again, the self-talk and the mindset side of things. I’m not saying it’s easy, but the first step might be to stop talking publicly about the bad things that happen. I see people who, they almost make it one of their content pillars to talk about the terrible things that have happened to them on threads.

Rachel: Yes.

It’s on threads, like, my launch failed and here’s why. It’s like, don’t do that.

Mel: They’re great. There is a lot to be said for the pratfall effect where you show a little bit of vulnerability and you show that you’ve made a mistake and, but it has to come from a position of strength now.

Lynne: Yes.

Rachel: Yes.

Mel: If you are still in the bad times.

Lynne: Step away from the computer. Yes.

Mel: Please. Step away from your keyboard. Because if you think about what a client is looking for when they’re scrolling threads or Instagram or LinkedIn and they’re looking for a writer for example, that’s a good example to use because we’re writers and they come across somebody who is only ever talking about the bad things that have happened or the client that didn’t pay them. I’m not saying you can’t call people out, but it has to be mixed in with a whole lot of more positive stuff, otherwise, what client is ever going to want to work with you if all you ever talk about is how you haven’t had any work for six months and that your last client was a bastard and the one before that was too. And then the one before that was horrible. It was like, maybe you are the problem.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t show their vulnerability, because I think there’s a lot to be said for being open and honest online and being yourself. I’m certainly not saying, try and pretend that things are amazing when they’re not. But I think if you’re trying to shift that, oh, I’m so unlucky, then the first steps definitely stop saying it out loud.

Lynne: Yes.

Mel: Then there’s probably some work to be done, perhaps with a therapist to explore the actual but what really happened in that situation. Or if you’ve got a trusted friend that you can talk to about it. But to be honest, Lynne, I think people who say that they’ve been unlucky for years, I don’t know if they’re going to be the kind of person who’s willing to do that kind of self-exploration. Or I don’t know.

Lynne: It’s tricky, isn’t it?

Mel: Because it’s easy. You get stuck. I’ve been unlucky and its luck’s fault rather than properly interrogating your role in it and its quite uncomfortable work to do.

Rachel: It’s a narrative. You just have kind of embodied it.

Mel: Well, it’s not my fault. It’s the world.

Rachel: Yes, yes, yes. It’s really true. I know a lot of people like that actually.

Mel: It’s hard to change them.

Rachel: Yes, yes, yes.

Mel: Because you can’t, they have to change their mindset. Sorry, I’ve just like going into therapy doc. It has to be something they want to do. And if they want to do that, then I think there’s ways to unpick it, but like any mindset issue, they have to want to change it.

Rachel: We actually did a podcast episode on busting through those negative narratives didn’t we recently, Lynne?

Lynne: We did quite recently.

Rachel: It was quite interesting because it is uncomfortable work and you don’t want to do it, but it can be really, really useful.

Mel: Dear listener. Go back and listen to that episode. Can you remember what number it was?

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: Oh, I can’t remember off the top of my head. I’ll put it in the show notes.

Mel: Put it in the show notes.

Rachel: Absolutely. In the show notes. Let’s talk about, because if you are, if I know that you’ve talked a lot about luck in your career and you’ve probably watched people who consistently seem to have a lot of clients, or their careers have suddenly taken off. What are you thinking when you see that? What do you think the core luck strategies are for people like that?

Mel: So, the most obvious one is that they put themselves out there. They put themselves out there and they talk about what they do, and I think a lot of people forget that part.

If it goes one of two ways, people either only ever talk about what they do, and you learn nothing about whether they’re interested in plants and keyboards and cheese. Those three of my things I’m interested in and so, they become this faceless beige person who just talks about three tips for copywriting, whatever, or it goes the other way and they talk about their dog and what they like to do at the weekends and a bit about their career history, but you don’t actually know, what do you do? What do people pay you money to do? I think the people who are the kind of the lucky ones, the ones that do well, they have that perfect balance of both. So, they make sure that people know what they can do for them.

And personally, that’s something I struggle with a bit. I tend to forget that bit. I’m trying to get better at doing that bit. Like reminding people every now and then, and those will be the posts that don’t do anything in numbers wise, but they’re the ones that the lurking clients will see and go, oh, yeah – it’s just reminding people, keeping you top of mind.

The other thing that I think lucky people whose careers have taken off do is they ask for stuff. That’s something I try and do. So, we are having this conversation because I said I would like to appear on more podcasts, and I put it out there

Rachel: Yes.

Mel: And said, I want to do this thing.

I think that people are a bit scared to ask sometimes, or they think people are going to go, well who do they think they are asking for this, this favour? I found it with speaking gigs as well. I had this brilliant bit of advice of a phrase to use of what would it take for you to book me to speak at X event. I used that one on someone – that sounds like it’s really manipulative, but I used that technique and got to appear last year at social day. I asked the organiser a social day, what would it take for me to be able to, and I ended up hosting a fireside chat and two panels.

So that, just having that, starting that conversation in a way that doesn’t feel too gross, doesn’t make you sound needy, doesn’t make you sound pushy, but just what would it take just a casual way. I was only able to do that because I already knew the person that organised the event through meeting her at lots of other events and going to her events in the past.

So it is that combination of the kind of the lead up of getting to build those relationships, then getting to the point where you can make that ask to do something.

Rachel: I love that because I think you are then engineering luck for yourself. You’re engineering opportunities for yourself. Whereas, and I have had this thought, I’ll be really transparent, where I would see people doing cool things like those online summits where you see like five big names and then someone you know who’s in that mix and you’re like, wow.

Mel: How did they get booked?

Rachel: How did they get into that? Did they ask or were they asked because they’re already known or whatever, and no one will ever ask me to do something like that. Do you know what I mean? So, it’s like remembering that you can ask and you can put yourself out there and it might be uncomfortable.

Mel: Well, when, when I got picked to speak at CopyCon, which is our, in the UK it’s the big copywriting conference and somebody I know who’s been a copyrighter way longer than I have said something like, oh, they’ve never asked me. I was like, you have to apply – there’s an application form. And she’d never applied and I think that sums it up, really.

Rachel: It does.

Mel: You can’t wait to be asked. You have to put yourself out there and no one’s going to be like, oh, she asked, that is gross, that she asks, oh, you’re not supposed to. It’s not like there’s some secret society that you have to be invited to. Most things aren’t, anyway, if you can put the application in, if there is one, if it’s a speaking gig we’re talking about, or make it clear that you’d love to, and I’ve seen people who will post on LinkedIn about their dream clients and then sometimes it leads them working with their dream clients.

There’s nothing to be lost by just putting out there that in 2027, I’d love to achieve these goals. That’s something else I’ve done. I’ve actually put speaking at CopyCon as my goal. I put it on Twitter a few years ago, so then in my talk at CopyCon, I was able to show – here’s the tweet that I put out there, setting it out there that I wanted to do this and as a result of putting it out there that I wanted to do it, I got invited, I got a referral from someone else I know to speak at a different event so that I could start getting those speaker reps up.

I think it’s just so much to be said for saying what you want. I know it sounds really obvious that a lot of people don’t do it.

Lynne: I think it’s interesting. I do see a lot of people waiting to be asked. Who are waiting to be asked to do something and there as back to Rachel’s point, they get a bit resentful of the people that are there being, they’re thinking, why didn’t they ask me?

Mel: If we can turn that jealousy into motivation. Because it’s okay to feel a bit jealous as long as you recognise it and go, I’m going to use that as my motivation and inspiration and instead of it being, oh, I’m jealous of that person. It’s more like, oh no, I’m going to try and flip that script in my head. I’m going to be inspired by them and I’m going to be motivated to not beat them, but to do that as well.

Lynne: So, we did talk about being in the right place at the right time, but how do you find the right place? How do you get there? I mean, rather than just, we’ve all been to things where we turned up and thought, oh, this is a waste of my time.

Mel: Yes.

Lynne: Or is that just me?

Rachel: No, it’s not just you.

Mel: It’s a hard one to answer really, because sometimes I found that the places that I’ve thought have will have been really good for my business, you turn up and you realise there is not a single person in the room who would be your client ever but I still don’t think that’s necessarily like a wasted opportunity because if you go into every situation with making friends as your first goal. Rather, I think if you go into it being like, right, who am I going to target and you have this kind of laser vision of right; I really want to speak to that person because I want them to be my client one day. People can smell that kind of, it’s a bit off-putting. Whereas, if you go into every situation with the goal being, I’m going to meet people, I’m going to get to know them, I’m going to ask, I’m going to be interested in them rather than trying to be interesting. If you’re interested in other people, then that’s lovely for them because everyone loves talking about themselves. So, if you can go into situations making those connections with people, even if not a single one of those people is a client – I was going to say client quality.

Lynne: Client persona.

Mel: Potential client. They will still come away from that event with a favourable opinion of you as a person. Hopefully you will have got across what you do, and you don’t know what rooms they’re going into. So, while it is great to try and pick events where your actual clients will be there, there’s huge value in going to events where your clients aren’t going to be there because you’re still building those connections with people and potentially being the name that they drop in another room when some somebody says they need a copywriter or an editor.

Rachel: So have the curiosity lens rather than the hardcore networking lens.

Mel: Absolutely.

Lynne: Yes.

Mel: Absolutely. Because when we’re fundamentally nosy people as well, so it’s much more enjoyable if you go into stuff just being a bit nosy about people and finding out about their lives.

Rachel: Yes.

Mel: As I say, people love it if you’re asking them questions about themselves. Then it just takes the pressure off you as well. You don’t go into the room feeling like I must close five deals by the time I come out. It’s very much a long game.

Rachel: Yes, yes.

Lynne: Yes. For sure.

Rachel: Well, we’ve talked a little bit about visibility, being visible and getting over yourself. But what about those people that we see everywhere who might take a message and write a newsletter about it? Create a carousel with the same message, do it, not a tweet. We’re talking about Twitter so much. Go on threads with the same message. It’s the same message everywhere and you might follow them, so you’re just bombarded by this repurposed copy everywhere, that’s just annoying really, basically. What are your views on that?

Mel: Well, this is where it’s good to have more than one content pillar because, I get it quite a lot where people are like, oh, every time I open LinkedIn, there you are and I’m like, good, good. Especially people who know me in my personal life rather than knowing me through work stuff. I know what you mean, where it can feel repetitive when people are saying the same thing over and over again, but if you are the one posting, I think it’s something like only 10% of your followers will see your LinkedIn post. I think even that’s like if you’re lucky.

Rachel: Yes.

Mel: I think it’s worth repurposing your content and making sure that you’re not just saying things once because otherwise, you’re going to miss other people seeing it stuff. If you can have more than one thing that you talk about and that’s where bringing in a little bit about your personal life.

I’m not saying that you need to bear all and talk about the most, the deepest, darkest secrets in your life, but if you can just throw a little bit of colour into things. So, you might be someone who randomly, well, one of the things about me that I mention every now and then is I used to represent Great Britain in this sport that no one’s ever heard of, and every time I’ve applied for a job in my life, I’ve put it on my CV because it’s a talking point. It’s a word that people probably never have seen. It’s called Tchoukball begins with Tch.  So, it’s like this really weird word and every interview I’ve then been asked, oh, what’s this game you used to play for Great Britain?

So, if it doesn’t have to be like the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. It might just be some little random fact that it’s just a little bit different about you. It’s something about you that other people that just makes you stand out that other people won’t necessarily know already and that’s how you can also avoid just being a one message pony as well by mixing up what you talk about. So, you become this 3D person in people’s minds rather than just, Mel who’s a copywriter.

Lynne: That’s interesting. Do you see common mistakes that freelancers make that stops that whole luck train?

Mel: Well, we’ve already mentioned the biggest mistake, dicey, which is people overly fixating on the negative stuff in their content. It just so happens they seem to be the ones that then are struggling to find work. I’m not saying that you can’t talk about, again, I don’t, I’m not here to police anyone’s LinkedIn feed and it’s entirely up to you what you put on LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever you find your clients. I think that, to sum it up in a sentence, the biggest mistake I see people make is forgetting that clients are watching.

So, they’ll have conversations that should be in private communities with WhatsApp groups, like with other freelancers. They talk online in public like they would around the water cooler, and it hurts me every time I see it because I think it’s really damaging and it’s just going to create negative link in people’s minds with that person if they’re constantly talking about bad stuff.

Lynne: Good point.

Rachel: Well, for freelancers, because we talked about how, you can go into a room being curious about people because you don’t know what rooms they’re going into and what they’re perhaps saying about you. So, do you think that that’s where freelancers see luck show up – in referrals from other people that seem to come out of the blue or relationships that they might have nurtured for a different reason that suddenly led to work and that sort of thing?

Mel: I think my first year, at least the first year, maybe year and a half of freelancing, all of my, or at least like a very high percentage, maybe like 90% of my jobs that I got in were through referrals from other people. Those are the good old days when there was plenty of work around. So yes, the relationship building is just huge. I cannot stress how important that is. But it also, not just in terms of getting referrals, but in terms of partnerships. So, I work with Dave Harland, and we first met on Twitter, when I met him in real life, I fangirled over him a bit. Embarrassingly and he used to be like; I want to be the female Dave Harland when I grow up.

And luckily, then, cooled my jets a little bit and we became really good mates and so we’d share on WhatsApp, we’d just share jokes with each other and just slowly but surely became really good mates. Did some work. I did some work for him when he needed an extra writer. Then when he formed Copy or Die worked with them so that the slow build of that relationship wasn’t originally like, I’m going to latch onto Dave Harland because he’s going to give me work. It wasn’t a strategic move. It was just a natural progression of being friends.

I think that potential to become partners to do stuff, and it might be that with the two of you. How did you end up becoming podcast pals? Those relationships can develop in loads of different ways not just improve your career options and your work, but also just improve your life and improve your hobbies. Having a podcast or there’s a couple of freelancers, Molly and Ange, who I often will just have little fun days out with, go to conferences with, go and have a photo shoot with and you can just, there’s so much more to it than meet people, get work. It’s not this transactional thing. It can improve your life in many ways. So, it’s definitely the relationships and friendships that form. I could give you, I could go on for hours about all the different ways and scenarios where I’ve met someone, become friends with them over time and it’s led to a business benefit.

The key I think is not going in expecting that. It’s going in, making friends.

Rachel: I completely agree and I love that you used the word transactional because I think that you can really tell if someone is trying to be your friend for transactional purposes and it’s just, is this person a friend or are they a business associate trying to get something from me.

Mel: Yes. Actually, I recorded an episode recently with Leah Turner, who she’s even more famous than Dave, in the UK. And we talked about fame and about how when the goal is to become well known, but there reaches a point where it’s become hard for Leah to know whether people are being friendly with her because they want to cash in on the association of having a selfie with her.

Lynne: Yes, that’s hard.

Mel: We talked about how some people we know will go to events and they literally selfie hop and they’ll go around, they’re like, hi, can’t you have a selfie? And then they’ve gone and then they’ll post as if you’ve had a nice long chat and like they’ve, oh, it’s great to see so and so but you literally said hello to me and then buggered off and then like you’re always looking over your shoulder and think that transactional thing is you can tell, and it’s very, very off-putting.

Rachel: You can tell because they’re not there when you do something big like a friendship sort of thing. If you do something big and that person is championing you, you know it’s more of a transactional thing. So, I love that idea of creating real relationships in business without expecting any outcome.

Mel: It might happen naturally and it’s also like just for your happiness and not feeling like you are – especially as a freelancer, not feeling like you’re on your own, having those people that you’ve built up a relationship enough to go, I’m in a real bind, I need some advice please. But not that having that be two way is so valuable.

Lynne: It’s so important. We’ve talked a lot on the podcast over the years that I do, I’m well known in the industry for my redundancy scones. So, when all my friends, particularly journalists have been made redundant, I invite them round for scones and…

Mel: That’s lovely.

Lynne: And because I’ve been freelancing for quite a while and we just have scones and I help them. I give them a pep talk, talk about the opportunities, talk about things like how to pimp their LinkedIn and the great freelance communities to be part of all that sort of stuff. But I was at a function the other day, and four of the people at this function had been to scones with me. Over, because I’ve been doing it for, I think about eight years now.

Rachel: And are they now all like, in the freelance thing, doing well.

Lynne: Oh no. Some of them – one of them was really senior, the Sydney Morning Herald because she’s moved around and they’re all over the place. But I just realised and somebody said, oh, Lynne does this thing, it’s really lovely. Somebody else, somebody said, oh yeah, I’ve had scones with Lynne, it was really nice.

Mel: Oh, that’s so sweet. They’re in Scone Club!

Lynne: They’re in Scone Club. And in fact, I did have, a friend of mine was made redundant. The first thing he did was ring me and said he’d like to come around for scones. But I did it just to be nice and because it can be isolating freelancing, but it has given me so much work over the years, through relationships, but that was never the intention. It’s more about what you’re saying, Mel, about the deeper relationships and helping. And I’ve also connected people because I know a bit more about them.

Mel: I love doing that.

Lynne: I’ve given people opportunities. Like a stylist I know – I was at this same function, a big furniture company here in Sydney, and one of the stylists who’s left one of the big magazines, and she and I said they were looking for a freelance stylist, and I said, she’s amazing. This is what she does and that’s a great gig for her, I think.

Mel: That’s one of the absolute joys. I’ve been referred to as intro pimp was one. Cool.

Lynne: Well, that’s good. I’d like that.

Mel: And then, and then a slightly more PC version – Super Connector. Because I love going, oh, you should know you. You two are going to get on well and kind of being a little bit of a Cupid matchmaker from a friend, from a personality point of view, you should know you because you’re going to get on well.  But also like, oh, you do this. Well, you should talk to this person. How? Come on, let me introduce you. Drag them over.

That gives me so much joy. It’s such a lovely feeling, isn’t it? To kind of see two people that you know, then connecting with each other. There’s something super warm and fuzzy about that.

Lynne: Yes. Makes everybody better. Brings all of us up.

Mel: But what the end result of that is that both those people will be like, oh, they’ll have warm feelings towards me for bringing them together, but that’s not why I do it. But that’s kind of the byproduct of it, is that you’re then liked and, who doesn’t want to be liked.

Lynne: Yes. Exactly.  Do you think you’ve ever seen somebody their luck and change their business? Or do you think it’s, as we talked about, is a really hard thing to sort of turn around.

Mel: I think it is a hard thing to turn around. One person that comes to mind though, is my friend – I’ve already mentioned her – my friend, her name’s Molly Scanlan, and she makes websites for people who are not evil. That’s very like her client requirements, so that they’re not evil.

Rachel: That’s cool.

Mel: Because she makes low carbon websites and I’ve seen her massively blossom at the risk of sounding really patronising. I don’t mean that Molly, sorry, but she started using LinkedIn with more intention in the last three months or so and that has massively, like she’s putting herself out there. She’s talking more about what she does. She’s reminding people that she has a newsletter, which I think a lot of that’s another thing that a lot of people don’t do enough of and she’s gained more clients from doing it.

We have this on running joke, this ongoing joke of, isn’t it weird – marketing works? Because yes, we both found that like, oh yeah, when actually I do this change and I’m talking for myself as well. I’ve had this kind of moment of realisation of, I think I said earlier, I need to talk more about what I actually do because I kind of get into the habit of just posting on LinkedIn about stuff without going, by the way, I can do these things for you.  So, that’s someone I’ve seen really improve their luck by doing all the things we’ve talked about. 

Rachel: Wow. Well, I mean, if someone’s listening, if there are writers listening and they think, okay, I’m going to generate some more luck for myself, I’m going to engineer it – what perhaps in finding clients, because that seems to be a big issue for a lot of people out there right now – what would you tell them to focus on first?

Mel: My main advice would be to, oh, I think I have to pick one thing. Oh, it’s really hard. If I’m going to pick just one thing, it’ll be to start using LinkedIn more strategically.

So, going into – think about who your ideal client is, what’s their job title? Go into LinkedIn search for that job title. Select, there’s loads of filters you can use on LinkedIn. If you go to more options, there’s tons of different filters, so you can look at people in your area. You can select by geography. You can select people who have second connections so that you know that they’re kind of, they might know someone that you know, and you can select third as well, but they’re just a little bit further out of your network. They’re probably a bit more of a long shot and start connecting with them. Start connecting with them in the first place. Don’t follow them. Connect with them, because if you’re following someone, you see their content, they don’t see yours and the goal is to get these ideal, like they might be – if you’re a copyrighter, it might be that you’re looking at chief marketing officers who are in budget holders in their organisation to be able to bring you into do the work.

So, just pick one job title. Start connecting, connecting, connecting. You’ll probably get to a point where LinkedIn pops up a little message that goes, you should only connect with people, you know. Just ignore that. But at that point, maybe stop and leave it, and then pick it up again another day because you want to increase your – we talked about increasing your surface area for luck – having those people see, and it is a long game. But if we’re talking about in the next ninety days, start by adding people who have the job title that you want to be seen by. It sounds very obvious, but people don’t do it.

And then hopefully they’ll start seeing your content. Start by commenting on their posts. Just get a little bit seen, edge your way into their world. Not just, great post thumbs up – something a bit more meaningful than that and just start trying to connect with people from, again, that friendship first, just have a casual back and forth in the comments. If you see something that you think is really relevant to them, you could DM them a link to it and say, oh, I just, I know that you do this kind of work. I thought you might find this interesting. Don’t go in with a cold pitch. First off, nobody likes a cold pitch.

Lynne: Oh, no. I hate that. I hate it.

Mel: Instant turn off.

Don’t go in with any intention of converting them as clients. It sounds counterintuitive but just go in with again that – let’s build a connection and be friends because we’re in the same field. And just a little tiny extra caveat on there, don’t be afraid of adding people who do exactly the same job as you because of that referral element that we talked about earlier about being referred by other people who do the job that you do. So, there’s nothing wrong with having loads of people in your network who do exactly what you do. Collaboration over competition. Let’s all be friends.

Lynne: I agree with that. I think we’ve always been big believers in that, haven’t we Rach?

Rachel: But there is an argument against having, say, a feed that’s full of copywriters instead of your ideal clients. I totally get what you’re saying, Mel, about how your peers bring referrals and all of that. But where was I reading that, say that you are talking about what you do – its only copywriters reading it rather than…

So, I love your tip about going and actually doing that whole process, that strategic process to finding the chief marketing officers and the people that can actually hire you and starting to build a feed of more of those people is really valuable.

Mel: There’s an interesting thing about LinkedIn that I only learned the other week when I went to a conference about LinkedIn, which I could like, just as a side note. I went to an event about LinkedIn. My job isn’t telling people how to use LinkedIn, but so don’t just go to the conferences that are about your particular niche. That was a little side bit of information, go to stuff. So, I’m looking at going maybe to a design festival this year, which is nothing to do with copywriting, but I’ll meet designers, maybe some chief marketing officers. It’s still a worthwhile place to go. There’s like those adjacent kinds of topics.

Anyway, so one of the things I learned at this LinkedIn conference is if you have DMs with people, your stuff is more likely to show up on their feed after that because that signals to LinkedIn that you’re a strong connection. So, if you can, this is very much do as I say, not as I do, because I’m terrible at, at DM-ing people. Terrible at keeping on top of my inbox actually.

But if you are going into these ninety days with focus, then the earlier you can get in there with a DM with your ideal client. As long as it’s not like cringey and salesy, the more likely your stuff is to come up on their feed. If you’ve got loads of fellow copywriters, say you’re a copywriter to use that example, and you are only ever DM-ing them, then you are going to be showing up on their feet.

You need to be strategic about all of your activity on LinkedIn. So, make sure you’re commenting on target clients rather than just having a chat amongst copywriters.

Rachel: So, what you were saying though, about how you connect with potential clients rather than following them. Are you just connecting them with them without the note or are you always putting a note in?

Mel: I don’t put note, I don’t put in notes.

Rachel: No notes. You just connect?

Mel: No, because I find receiving a note a little bit…

Rachel: Salesy?

Mel: I don’t want to say annoying, right? Because I don’t want to offend anyone that’s ever sent me a note with a connection request. Sometimes it can be handy if they’re like, oh, hi, great to meet you at such and such event and that’s it. I think if they’re sending a connection request with a note, and it goes, so what are your goals for your business this quarter? I’m like, excuse my language – I won’t swear – f off. I do not have time. You’ve just given me a job, an admin job, and my back’s up a little bit because my alert is tingling because I think you’re about to try and sell me something. I don’t like receiving notes. I will put them in sometimes if I want to give someone context. It might be that I’m clicking on their profile loads because I’m checking links for a client that I write the emails for.

It might be that there’s a really good reason why I look like I’m kind of stalking them, but I’m not. So, I might put a note in for that kind of reason. And also, you only get something like three per month or some tiny amount if you don’t have the premium LinkedIn. So, don’t bother with a note.

But once you’ve connected, if you’ve got something you want to say to people, then you, you can DM once you’ve connected without it costing you.

Lynne: So, we finish the podcast each time with our fast three questions. So, are you ready?

Mel: I’m ready.

Lynne: Ready? Good.

Rachel: Okay. Alright.

Mel: Limbered up.

Rachel: First question. Favorite tools of the trade you can’t live without?

Mel: I’m sorry. I’m just instantly not answering in a quick way. I’m going to answer in a quick way. Okay. This is my keyboard and I love it.

Rachel: Ah, very colourful.

Mel: It’s clicky, clacking. And I love it. And it was the colour, the colours informed my branding when I first went freelancer, and I got this when I had my first invoice paid as a freelancer.

Lynne: Oh, nice.

Mel: Quite a bit crazy. And then I also, another thing is my Remarkable.

Rachel: Ooh, I’m a Remarkable fan myself.

Mel: You’re remarkable. You are a remarkable person, Rachel.

Rachel: Mm, thank you!

Mel: And I’ve got the one, I’ve got the keyboard folio.

Rachel: Oh.

Mel: And that, because the Remarkable doesn’t connect to the internet in any meaningful way, I can just focus on typing. So, if I’ve got a Freelancer magazine article to write, I’ll often use this to write them the article.

Lynne: It keeps you away from the internet.

Mel: Because I can’t be distracted on it. So, those are my main tools and of course my beautiful human duty brain.

Lynne: Love it. Yes, of course. Question two is one habit that genuinely saves you time.

Mel: It’s very boring but writing a to-do list. Oh, like when I’m really stressed, I try and channel Anna from Frozen 2. There’s a song in the middle where, so everything’s gone wrong, and she sings about focusing on just the next right thing and so when I get really stressed and I’ve got loads of stuff going on, that’s how I’ll go and stop myself from being distracted.

Having the to-do list helps that helps that massively.  The way it saves time is otherwise I will flit – I’m a flitter and I’ll be like, I’ll do a little bit of this, and I’ll do a little bit of that, and then that isn’t time efficient. My brain is not time efficient in any way, shape or form. So, if I really need to get on, I’ll be, focus on the next right thing. Just get through that, even if it means setting a timer and then giving myself a chocolate or an orange or something.

Lynne: Fair enough.

Mel: So, I’ll have these almonds after I’ve done this one job. One thing though that I see writers do loads is, and you’ve probably done this before that you’ll be like, alright, I need a wee, but I’ll just finish this bit of work before I go. It’s like, we need to stop doing that. We need to make sure that we are going to the toilet when we need the toilet. Not treating it like something…

Rachel: Not rewarding ourselves.

Lynne: No. Not good. Not good.

Mel: We’ve all done it. We’ve all done it.

Rachel: I’m going to send you my favourite to-do list, which I’ve recently discovered and it’s awesome. It’s like a running list. Anyway, I’ll send it to you separately because it’s amazing. Okay.

Mel: Lovely. Thank you.

Rachel: Final question. One thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career.

Mel: Switch to being a copywriter.

I didn’t become a copywriter till I was 38. No – older. I don’t know. But having said that, I always say, I think there’s a benefit to me having done other stuff because then I’m more worldly wise and, I think if I’d gone straight into doing it, I wouldn’t have had the life experience that I think is quite important as a writer to draw on.

Rachel: Amazing. Wow, this has been a great chat.

Lynne: A really good chat. Thank you so much!

Mel: I’ve had such fun. Thank you.

Lynne: I hope our listeners run with some of those strategies. Think about luck and engineer their own luck in a better way.

Rachel: And try that LinkedIn sequence that you mentioned.

Lynne: That’s really good.

Rachel: Which is really, really useful.

Mel: I’d love to know if it works, if people should tag us all in a post about it if it works.

Rachel: On that note, tell us where everybody listening can find you, follow you, stalk you in the nicest possible way.

Mel: Well, I hang out the most on LinkedIn, so it’s just Mel Barfield. If you type in Mel Barfield like Garfield the cat, but with a B at the beginning is how I spell it over the phone. I’m also on Instagram @allcopymel. And my podcast, as you said, is called Indie Business Club and people can sign up to the Substack indiebusinessclub.substack.com.

Rachel: Fabulous.

Mel: Fantastic.

Lynne: Thanks. We’ll put links to that in the show notes.

Rachel: Thank you so much.

Lynne: Thank you, Mel.

Mel: Thank you so much.

Credits:

Connect with Mel via:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniebarfield/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allcopymel/
Substack: https://indiebusinessclub.substack.com/ 

and the agency she runs with Dave is https://copyordie.co.uk/ 

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co