#21 Why am I changing The Freelance Ads Club?

Hello welcome to the freelance ads club podcast with me your host Aggie Meroni. Whether you're a seasoned freelance ads manager, or just thinking about taking the leap into self employment, this podcast is for you. Every week, I'll be releasing a bite sized episode, I'll be sharing mistakes I've made and lessons I've learned from my own freelance business. I'll be showcasing some of the amazingly talented freelancers in the freelance ads club. And I also will be speaking to some incredible guests, who will generously be sharing their knowledge with us to help us keep updated with industry trends. And I really hope that after listening to this podcast, you will come away full of confidence on how to win great clients, how to charge correctly, and most importantly, retain those dream clients so that you build a successful and sustainable business. Hi, everybody. So welcome to the latest episode of the freelance ads club Podcast. Today is a bit of a different episode because I am going to be sharing with you some changes that I'm going to be making to the freelance ads clubs. So before Christmas, no, actually, let me rewind that. So the freelance ads club, for those of you don't know is a Slack channel that I have created. And it's free at the moment for anyone that's a trained freelance ads manager to join. And I launched this last May, because I felt there was really a lack of a community of ads managers across all ad platforms. There's lots of groups that you know, support ads managers that manage Google ads, or maybe they manage Pinterest ads, or meta ads. But realistically, freelancers will probably dabble on a few platforms. And there was nowhere for us to communicate and collaborate and get to know each other and share our common issues and celebrate our common goals and achievements and things like that. Also, I think freelance ads managers have very specific issues. I mean, there are lots of freelance groups for sort of copywriters, or marketers in general, but the issues that ads managers have are very niche. So the platform's update constantly. There's, you know, glitches outages, the client issues, we have a very specific, and I just felt that there was something missing in supporting people like myself. I mean, it was a purely selfish thing that I set it up, let's be honest. But it's been great so far. I mean, so many people have joined, I think the latest count is 147 People in the free group, which is more than I ever imagined. And I polled everyone before Christmas, asking, you know, what are you loving about the group? What do you think we could improve? And there are a few themes that came out about things that some of the people in our community were flagging, as areas they'd love more supported. And to be honest, the things that came up, were not surprised to me, because it became apparent after a few months of being in there getting to know everyone, even through this podcast, that there were certain challenges that were really hard to address in this in the format of the slack as it currently is. So based on all that feedback, and you know, the pilot, I guess, that we've had since May last year, I'm going to be shaking things up a bit and making things a bit different. So first of all, the freelance as club free slack channel will not be disappearing, so it will still exist, it will be renamed, the name is TBC to be confirmed. So if anyone's got any bright ideas, any of you that are creative, just get in touch with your suggestions. And the changes that I'm going to make to the slack. So previously, I even though it was automated, in that to apply, you had to complete your application form to show that you had training that you are a freelancer, or that you're working in house or a brand, but doing a bit of freelancing on the side. I was vetting every single person that applied. So I was checking your LinkedIn, I was checking mutual connections, I was verifying that you were doing training that I recognised. I mean, I know that I don't know every single training course out there. But there are a few out there that are like the gold standard of ads training. So I was just checking to see what people were doing to get that to train themselves and their ongoing development. So I've removed myself from that process. So now it's an automated process, so people still have to apply. So I'll still have your email address and I'll still have your history so I'll have your LinkedIn profile or have your training, but you will be emailed a link to join free slack group, I'll still be checking in on that now. And again, if I see people that are agency owners, I will remove them. If it's flagged to me that there's people being unpleasant in there harassing people in there any anything discriminatory or offensive going on in there, then I will be removing people. But I won't be as present in the group. So I won't be in there every day. But I will still have an eye on what's going on in there. So what am I going to be changing, I'm going to be changing how many channels are in the free slack. So I'm going to be removing pretty much all of them except for a general channel. So if you just want a place to find other freelancers, or ask a question quickly, you can still do that. However, the breakdowns, as is at the moment by channel, your general channel and your hiring channel, and all that kind of thing. Those are being removed, and that is going to be carried over into our launching. And that is the freelance as club membership. Now, memberships are a funny thing. I have put off launching this for a long time. Firstly, if I'm honest, I didn't think anyone would join. And secondly, there's a lot of fatigue, I think around memberships because so many bad ones around. So I wanted this to be completely bespoke to what our community needs is, and really support on the pain points that we have, because I'm not going to run this, if it's something that people don't want. And they don't think it's going to help them grow their businesses pretty much, it has to be something that's really your value, I don't want it to be something that people go oh, there's some shit, you know, membership for ads managers, I want people to like aspire to be part of this group. That's, you know, I want it to be full of really top class, amazing ads managers that we get a really good reputation collectively, and agencies and brands are seeking us out to hire us, because I honestly think that you have a better chance as a collective as a community to attract attention and get yourself known. So that is why I'm just stepping things up a bit. For us. One of the things will not be though, is an ads, training membership. So there are lots of memberships around at the moment that will keep you up to date or meta Google or Pinterest, whatever you like, because everyone in here, managers different combinations of platforms, I will not be training anyone on us. I'm also not a guru. So I don't feel like I'm in a position to train everyone on everything. But I will be bringing in people when needed to help support us to grow our businesses. So my background is sales. I was in sales for 10 years. And I see something the question most asked is how do you find work? Like where do you find your clients. So this is what this whole memberships about this is about helping us make more money. Now, this doesn't mean that everyone's going to be like six, figure seven, figure, whatever, you know, freelancer, this is a you earn enough money to live the lifestyle that you want. So whether it's because you want to work around hobbies, maybe you want to travel, maybe you've got kids, or maybe you've got other commitments, I want to create freedom for people in their businesses. So they're not working all the time for clients that stress them out and make them unhappy. So that's pretty much what I want to achieve with this membership. So how am I going to do this, I really believe that in order to build your business, you need relationships. And I want to facilitate that in the membership. So I'm going to have to live calls over zoom every month. I don't know what times they'll be because we need to see who's in the membership where people are based what time zones. But I also want to structure them so that more introverted members get their say and get known as well, because I'm very aware that Zoom calls can be taken over by a couple of stronger personality. So I want to make sure that everyone gets a voice in the membership. Also, depending on where we all are, I want to organise live live meetups so we can actually see each other face to face. I've also created a members directory. So this is somewhere that Whoever joins will be able to complete all the details, contact details, what platforms they manage ads on what preferred niches they have, if they're open to work, if they're open to permanent works. I know that's something that came up recently as well, people are open to moving in house or at an agency or something like that. So that's going to be like the visibility at the moment is really difficult to know who's in the slack and what they do. So that's something that I want to help people like facilitate them with. I'm also going to be launching a job board in there. So it's going to be a lot more proactive. I've got plans to promote the membership externally to brands and agencies. So I'll either be posting opportunities there, members will be referring back to each other I hope because obviously we're not competition everyone's got different strengths and work that they want. So you know, it's going to be a place where we can share opportunities. And also the members directory just to get back on the other point is somewhere that I can share with brands or agencies as well, it can be a two pronged thing, I'm also going to launch something called the holiday club. So one of the bugbears as a freelancer is you never get time off, because you always have to work, there's like no one to take the slack for you. Even if you just want a weekend away, or you know, just a longer break. So dependent, this is obviously going to be very beta like depend. And there's a lot of trust involved, because you need to handover your accounts to someone. So this is why getting to know other people in the membership is going to be crucial. And I'm going to be facilitating people to help them build their relationships with other members. This is like there's only two more things on this list, I promise, there's going to be a whatsapp channel, so and it's one that only I will post in. So whenever there's a new lead in the slack, I'm going to let you know. So you can go in and check. And whenever we having a live call, I'm going to drop a reminder in there as well. I just think people always have their phones on them, they might not always by be by their laptop on Slack or have the notifications on, which is completely fine. I don't expect you to be like switched on all the time. But I think it will just help you not miss things. And I'm also going to add a mini tutorial in the members portal on how to use Slack well, because I'm aware that there's a lot of people that don't engage that much because they don't use Slack very often. You know, they don't have much experience using it. But it's a very conscious decision that I'm not going to be on Facebook, because I've noticed that Facebook groups in the last year or so it's actually really hard to see the content of groups that you're in, and that the tag the everyone tag just drives everyone nuts. And I hate it when people start tagging everyone in all the groups, and I don't want to be that person. So slack is staying. I also think from a personal perspective, I can keep my work and personal boundaries easier in that with using slack because it's more of a business channel for me. So to summarise, because I've realised I've literally dumped quite a lot of information on either the freelance ads club membership is launching, the free slack channel is not going away. But it will have reduced channels, there'll be no job board anymore. And I'm not vetting people that join except for agency owners, they are not allowed the freelance ads club it will be launching for one day only for 24 hours on the first of Feb. So keep your eyes peeled for that it will have in there won't have in there. Any sort of ad specific training, it's gonna be very much peer supports. So community is the aim of this membership. Okay, this is all about supporting each other coming together. And having a safe space where we can kind of ask for advice support each other, collaborate etc. and things you will have included are two live zoom calls, live meetups, I hope that our members directory, a job board or holiday club and WhatsApp channel. So you get all the alerts and a tutorial on how to use Slack. So I'm opening this up for one day only. And for a really kind of reduced rate at first, because there will be teething problems. As with anything that I'm sure any of you have launched the first time you launch shirts, there's going to be stuff that goes wrong. So this is kind of a thank you price for persevering. And also I want to build it around what you need. So you're going to be helping me build it. So it's going to be either 39 pounds a month or 420 pounds for the year. And that is a purely founder member price. Once doors close, I don't know when they'll open again because I'm not sure how it's going to sort of evolve. But anyone that joins as a founding member will become an affiliate if they want and when I reopen to new members, the price will be higher because hopefully it'll be a well oiled machine machine by them. So that is in a nutshell what I've been working on. As I said, it's really taken a long time for me to think you know, is this actually needed? Is there a demand for this and from once one conversations I've been having there is a need for this like people are frustrated on you know the work they're getting the quality of the work, you know the unreliability of it unsure how to negotiate you know, like pay and all that kind of stuff. So this is what I want memberships before i as i said i'll be launching it on the first of Feb and there is going to be a waitlist that I'm going to open the cart to first so if you want to join the waitlist then the link is in the show notes. And if you have any questions before the first of February or anything you want to inputs or anything you think I've missed, then please get in touch with me either. Hello at the freelance ads club again. And in the show notes, or on Instagram, you can find us at ATS the freelance ads club so you can send me a DM there. But I'm really excited about this. I really can't wait to welcome the founding members into our amazing membership with amazing kickass freelancers. So until the next time, I'll see you then