[00:01] – Justin McCullough
What do you do when it's your turn to lead? Well, that's a great question. The Vision, Values and Velocity podcast is all about a better way of thinking and how to get you where you are now to where you want to be as quickly, confdently, and intentionally as possible so you can make an impact at work, home, and life. Well, hello, my friend. This is Justin McCullough, and it is my goal to give you the encouragement, clarity, and confdence to tackle whatever your next big thing is, whether that's leading a team, running a business, taking on a new project, or maybe starting a conference. And I'm certain these stories, just like Emily here, is going to help you along the way. So let's take a look at the leadership traits of Emily Leach, founder of Freelance Conference.

[00:43] – Justin McCullough
Listen in and maybe take some notes, and I'll see you on the other side of the interview.

[00:55] – Justin McCullough
Hey, this is Justin McCullough. We're at the Small Business Festival, ready to talk to Emily.

[00:59] – Emily Leach
So my name is Emily Leach, and I founded the Freelance Conference here about three years ago. It was an interesting event that really caused this to happen. There was a small group that I created online of freelancers sharing work and things like that. I said, oh, how much fun would it be to go hang out with other freelancers? Because I've been a freelancer since 92, and I went to go fnd a freelance conference and it didn't exist. And I just couldn't believe it. I mean, I even looked in other countries. I was willing to go anywhere to go to a freelance conference. And so I was like, okay, I've got fve years of experience with TEDx. I've been a freelancer forever. How hard could this be? The answer is hard.

[01:36] – Justin McCullough
Oh, yeah?

[01:37] – Emily Leach
How was it? It's been a defnite challenge, but I've learned so much. I've got to meet so many amazing freelancers. It's like I thought I knew what freelancing was all about until I went through that process. I mean, a nonproft has come out of it. All kinds of things that I would never have imagined three years ago.

[01:56] – Justin McCullough
That's amazing. So whenever you had that idea and you saw that there was nothing there to fll that need, like, what were some of the steps you went through? Like, how did you actually make that idea come to life?

[02:06] – Emily Leach
I can be rather impetuous. I think naivety is probably my gift. And so I literally got onto a domain registrar, GoDaddy or whatever, and I just started looking for what would be a good name. So I put in Freelance Conference and It was available. I said, what better name to call a freelance conference than freelance conference? And so I bought it and sat there for a little bit, went, all right, so I guess I need a website. I'm a web designer. Freelance web designer. All right, so let's do that. By midnight, I had a domain, I had a website, and I had an idea of when I wanted to have it. So I started looking through the calendar of events in Austin.

[02:40] – Emily Leach
So we have south by, and we have quite a few conferences that happen like the end of the year and the beginning of the year. So what are my gaps? And it's like, well, you either do it after south by, which meant May, June, for it all to settle down and stuff like that, or you do it maybe October between summer and after ACL. So I picked October. So I was 90 days away from the day that I came up with this idea. So I picked a date, I put it on the website, hadn't even called a location yet. This is just the date I'm going to have it. And just plowed forward and started pushing out. And I was new in Austin. I've only lived here. I'd only lived here maybe a year or two, so people didn't really know me.

[03:20] – Emily Leach
I just started pushing out. Hey, freelancers, let's get together. Let's do this as a conference.

[03:24] – Justin McCullough
That's right. So it sounds like the beginning of an overnight success. I had an idea, I was able to get the domain name that night. I started building the website. And then within just a couple of months, I'm ready to do this event. Was it an overnight success?

[03:39] – Emily Leach
In the conference world, a lot of people would say yes. So your frst year, the goal is to not completely lose it all. And it paid for itself. Put a little bit of pocket money in my pocket, but it also took three months of my time that I couldn't do client work and stuff. And so, yes, ish. It was a success in that we got 100 freelancers to come together. And I still hear stories of people talking about the gigs that they got at that event, the things that they learn, the lessons that they still implement in their business. So in that regard, absolutely, it was a success and people were excited for the next year.

[04:12] – Justin McCullough
So I have to ask you, freelancers are often self employed with just them, right?

[04:17] – Emily Leach
Just themselves and more of themselves. Yes.

[04:19] – Justin McCullough
So 90 days to get this business off the ground for other freelancers. You were a freelancer. How did you manage the cash fow? How did you manage the business? How did you manage the stress of like, oh my gosh, it takes so.

[04:29] – Emily Leach
Much line of credit actually is. I was just willing, I believed in it so much that I was just willing to say, okay, I have this. I didn't really have savings and stuff at the time. And so I just dove in and gave it all and decided that the business could take on that debt. And I took on as much client work as I could. But you're right, especially the closer you got, that last 45 days, it was just impossible. You couldn't get that done because again, people didn't know me yet. So I didn't have the volunteer base. I did all of it up until about three or four weeks before the event. People started to reach out and say, hey, do you have volunteer? Do you need volunteers? It's like, I could use a volunteer or two.

[05:08] – Emily Leach
And that's how we got the frst year put on. And here's to me. This was the most exciting part, was after it all, you know, you do your survey and usually when you do a survey post event, you get 10, 15% of the people respond. We have 55% of the people respond to the survey. And 97% of those people said, I will come back next year. So it's like, okay, I think I did something right.

[05:31] – Justin McCullough
That's great. So you have. So how many years in are you now?

[05:35] – Emily Leach
This will be our third year.

[05:36] – Justin McCullough
Third year. So we're approaching the third year of the conference and it's very clear that you were a freelancer. You saw a need for freelancers. So as an entrepreneur, you said, okay, there's a market for this. I understand this market, I want to serve this market. So now that you're three years in or on your third, what have you learned about freelancers and what do you want to share with the freelancers that are listening today?

[05:55] – Emily Leach
Well, the premise of the freelance conference is to teach freelancers how to run their business better, more effectively, make more money more efciently. Most people are freelancers for the lifestyle. And so for me, what I loved so much about freelancing is it allowed me to be a stay at home single mom. It allowed me to kind of travel the world because all I needed was a laptop and Internet, which is pretty easy to fnd. Well, the Internet part, you have to take her own laptop usually. But what I found so many freelancers talking about was I don't understand how to invoice, I don't understand how to do my llc, you know, the business side of it. And so I really wanted to Have a space where freelancers could come and learn from each other.

[06:32] – Emily Leach
I've done an llc so you and I could sit and chat. Right. But I haven't done maybe this marketing plan, but that's what you do. So let's sit and chat. I may even hire you. So we're very much a peer based platform as far as the, you know, workers, if you will, in the freelance economy. And that's where I learn. That's where I see that they learn the most and I kind of learn the best because I can trust you and because so many of us work alone, we work from home, it's hard to fnd those people, you know, your peeps, your tribe. So I said, why don't we just pull these, pull everybody together, as many of us as we can, once a year at least.

[07:09] – Emily Leach
We'll start there and see where it goes and spend a couple of days sharing stories and bringing answers to some of our really tough questions that people ask throughout the year.

[07:19] – Justin McCullough
That's great. So I can see the passion. I can see that you really love this new one. It completely shows. Yeah. And we're passionate about small business, so I totally know what it looks like it feels like. So I have a question for you. Let's imagine two different freelancers. One is the one that's just ready to take the venture out, they're just starting. And the other one is somebody maybe three, four, fve years in. What would you tell each of those people to take that next step on their journey?

[07:44] – Emily Leach
Hone your skills. Hone your business skills. I have found that even freelancers 20 years in, I've taught classes even on how to be a freelancer, the business side. And I've even had people 20 years in say, oh my goodness, I learned more in the last two days than I've learned in the last 20 years. So no matter how far you are in, whether you're thinking about it, you're doing it, you've taken the jump, you're fve, 10, 20 years in. Go and look at your efciencies in your business or the lack thereof and fnd out where you can make more money using less time.

[08:16] – Justin McCullough
That's great. Great. So you mentioned that you had plenty of experience previously with Ted Talks.

[08:21] – Emily Leach
TedX. Yes.

[08:22] – Justin McCullough
So how about this for those in the audience who are exploring what conferences are, we're here at a wonderful conference now with a bunch of entrepreneurs and small business owners. What would you tell folks who are trying to organize a conference or debating whether they should even Invest in a conference. Why would they do that? Why should your freelancers come?

[08:39] – Emily Leach
Well, you actually just answered your own question. You don't know it yet. Tell me, why would you do that? You know, really understand. Why would you do this? Because some people put on conferences, not even really to make money at the conference, as their loss leader, in a marketing term. And then some people do it totally to try to make money, but they don't know. They don't really understand everything that's involved. So my frst suggestion is that's what you want to do, and you can answer why. You have a clear reason why and it makes sense to you from a business perspective. Go fnd someone happy to reach out to me. I'm happy to talk to you and ask if you can shadow them or just go and understand what's really needed.

[09:20] – Emily Leach
So when I started the small Microsoft Small Business Festival, when I started the freelance conference, although I had all those years of experience, so we'd grown TEDxABQ from zero to a couple thousand people, I knew that there was still a lot that I didn't know. And that's the problem with everything freelancing small business. You don't know what you don't know. And so what I did was I reached out to some other people that own their own conference and said, hey, what if we got together and created a mastermind? So we do. We get together twice a year, still three years later, and we just sit down for six hours a full day. What did you do? What did you do? What failed? What worked? I want to do this. Why do you want to do, you know, all those kinds of questions?

[09:57] – Emily Leach
And it was actually unbelievable.

[10:01] – Justin McCullough
That's great. So what I heard was really the importance of a tribe of people, right?

[10:06] – Emily Leach
Yep.

[10:07] – Justin McCullough
And I heard you talking about how important it is to fulfll a need. Right. And you saw the need with the conference and to bring these people together and understand that they're all in different places. And a lot of times that's on the business side.

[10:16] – Justin McCullough
Right.

[10:17] – Justin McCullough
The operation side, not in their craft, typically. Right. So you have now had, what is this, over 20 years experience as a freelancer.

[10:24] – Emily Leach
Right.

[10:24] – Justin McCullough
Is that right?

[10:24] – Justin McCullough
20 ish?

[10:25] – Justin McCullough
Yes, 20 ish. You said 96, I think.

[10:26] – Justin McCullough
Right?

[10:28] – Justin McCullough
Okay, so as we round out this last question, I'm just curious, what would you tell those aspiring entrepreneurs that you just know would really be helpful to them?

[10:36] – Emily Leach
You can do it.

[10:37] – Justin McCullough
That's great.

[10:38] – Emily Leach
You can do it. Your tribe is out there. Whether you come to the freelance conference, whether you fnd your Own local tribe. Whether it's a meetup, just go fnd the people that are doing it and let them guide you, let them lead you, let them inspire you if you're having a problem getting there, because you can do this. I mean, I didn't know what I was even doing. I literally quit my job on a Tuesday, lived in Albuquerque on a Saturday, learned freelancing and it gave me a really great life.

[11:06] – Justin McCullough
That's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us today. I'm Justin McCullough and this is Emily Leach and this is Small Business Festival.

[11:17] – Justin McCullough
There you go. What a great set of feedback from Emily Leach on how to start a conference and what her experience was like and the encouragement that she can do it and how awesome is her model, right, that you can be self sufcient. She started basically on an idea, bought the domain name, built the website, picked a date 90 days out and just started making it happen. I think that's a great example of being empowered and capable and using everything you have, your skills and talents to bring it together into fruition and to do it boldly and with courage. And she mentioned maybe that naivete and being impetuous was a gift and a value for her. And I think ultimately maybe that's a little bit of childlike wonder and expectation that you can do it and you can do it well.

[12:04] – Justin McCullough
And I think she's told us a very good story around what that looks like. And you know, another big thing that stuck out to me is just the importance of tribes and community and being together. And you know, it didn't really occur to me what a freelancer might be going through working just from a laptop and the Internet, not really having their people, you know, the workplace people, the folks that are in the cubicle next to them, that kind of thing because they're freelancers. And so I saw and heard quite a bit of interest around, you know, being a valuable resource to others, wanting to connect with like minded people, wanting to share lessons learned and ultimately connect beyond yourself.

[12:44] – Justin McCullough
And in her case, I think she was so hungry for it, she was willing to travel the world for it and found that there was just nobody out there doing something like what she had in mind. So she made it. So I want to encourage you that your tribe matters, the people that you're around matters. And in her case, you know, building a conference and then ultimately doing a couple masterminds every year, getting like minded people together and a great way to build the business. And I think we can see the fruit of that and her efforts and her business and what's come out of it. And, and I think it's an inspiring story around having a vision. And, and you know, I talk about this a lot. The vision is something that's attainable, sustainable and compelling.

[13:23] – Justin McCullough
And I think in her case, what a great example of that, right? She it was sustainable because she was able to achieve it in 90 days and then course keep it going into years beyond. It was compelling because a lot of freelancers wanted to be a part of it. In fact, 100 people in the frst year, which is really 100 people in 90 days. And then it was attainable. Her past experiences made it a reality for her and that she could actually get it done. So thank you so much for watching today or listening today's episode of Vision Values Velocity. You can check out the website visionvaluesvelocity.com to learn more about how all this comes together.

[13:57] – Justin McCullough
Together, of course, you can connect with me on Twitter ccjustin and you can visit me on the website justin mccullough.com thanks to Emily Leach for being a part of that interview and Matthew Pollard who built Small Business Festival and let me use the interview clips and to Breakmaster Cylinder for the podcast thing. Thanks a ton. I look forward to talking to you on the next one.

[14:19] – Emily Leach
Bye.