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Spreading The Net by Richard Squirrell!




There are more people to help you than you might imagine. (The net is wide.)

It was around 1987. I'd been running my (principally) copywriting business in Edinburgh for around 2 years and
had decided to get myself a fax machine. I rented one from someone from my home town, Newcastle (always a sucker punch). It wasn’t cheap but any cost was swiftly forgotten as it started to prove a really effective business tool.

The principal reason why both myself and the clients I was now talking to, and doing business with, really took to the idea of using the fax was that it didn’t matter where anyone in the buying or providing arena happened to be located. We could all reach each other and communicate - easily. The fax opened people’s minds to the wider possibilities of how they could get work done - which, in turn, opened markets. Why is it, then, that now we have remoteness of location totally cracked with the internet and e-mail, that people are reeling their boundaries
in, instead of expanding them? I have found that many of the people seeking the services I offer (copywriting) are
only interested in somebody local to them - so why do they advertise their requirements on an internet website?

My understanding - based on my barrier-breaking experience with fax - has always been that, if you have a communication tool that can reach loads of people, you use it to cast your enquiries as widely as possible.
And the internet is certainly that tool. Surely, if you want to recruit someone locally, you will do better to recruit them in a more local medium than on the wide-ranging geography of those who use the internet? Either that or you continue to use the internet and consider the bigger, wider world it can open up to you in terms of
individuals and services. While there will be some instances where the kind of job you are talking about can
necessitate an ‘on-the-spot’ presence, there are many more where the location of the person/skill you want will not matter. Hesitate from taking on a ‘remote’ worker? Worry that they may not be able to get the essence of what you are looking for without getting involved with you where you are? I have an an interesting anecdote for that.

Some years ago, I marketed myself using the most direct of marketing mediums: the telephone. Amongst the people I spoke to was the Creative Director of an advertising agency in Aberdeen (about 160 miles north from me). He was interested and said they might have work for me. The next day I got a phone call. It was from the person I had speaking to in Aberdeen the previous day - giving me my first job from his company, already! And the jobs continued to come. I had not seen anyone from the agency. I had not been inside their premises or anywhere near them. Yet I seemed to be bright enough to understand what they wanted from me - and to deliver it. Believe it or not, it was over a year before I met anyone from the agency face-to-face. The point to be made is that this meeting wasn’t vital to the success of our relationship - this had been established on a 'remote' basis already - but it was clearly nice to have happen anyway. I can also report that, when the agency in question finally saw what I looked like, it didn't end our relationship there and then!

In the interests of finding the best people to help your business, the thing to perhaps keep uppermost in your mind is that there is a really broad range of talent out there: freelancers of my persuasion and every other kind. All easily reached through Freelancers in the UK. If you are convinced you need a local answer, then that is what you will go for and ask for. But how much better - how much more exciting and, very likely, effective - if you open your mind to the idea of sourcing your needs from a far greater spread of talent. There are clever people everywhere - not just on your own doorstep. For example, it has long been realised that London is not the only place to create impressive advertising. Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and any number of other cities in Britain have demonstrated they can more than compete.

Reach out and talk to all the talent that is out there.


With thanks to eloquent wordmeister Richard Squirrell whose website can be viewed at www.ad-hoc.co.uk and who is currently accepting projects and commissions from any part of the country...
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