Meet Our Founders: Laura
The Doers all started with just two people, Jess & Laura. Their creative ideas, marketing expertise, and brand values are what created this collective of freelancers, and of course our Inner Circle. Grab a cup of tea, it’s time to catch up with them both and find out a little more about them.
Let’s start off with Laura, our organisational whizz and marketer with over 12 years’ experience…
Hi Laura, Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and how long you have been doing it?
I’m the Co-Founder of The Doers, mum of three, and food obsessive.
Jess & I started The Doers in September 2018. Before that, I’d worked in PR and Marketing for over 10 years in everything from consumer brands to the public sector and third sector - condoms, sheds, paint, food waste, and everything in between!
I’ve always enjoyed getting deep under the skin of a business, getting to its core, and understanding what makes it tick and who its audience is. I love being there at the very start of an idea, adding to it, evolving it, and watching it grow - there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing it all come to life and deliver great results. Throw this together with my top-notch organisational skills and I’m there to bring a marketing strategy to life and project manage our amazing freelancers to get doing!
How and why did you start The Doers?
After working at PR and marketing agencies, big and small, and then working in-house, my personal life took over and I left to have baby number one. Baby number one turned into baby number two ... .and three. Soon I was living this really hectic but fulfilling life at home but my work life wasn’t quite up to par. I needed something to keep my mind busy and give me a buzz above and beyond being ‘Mummy’.
Jess and I had worked together in an agency, years ago now, and always worked well as a team. Life took us off in different directions, different agencies and then in-house, but we always stayed in touch and our friendship grew and grew.
Over time we both grew tired of the agency model and its one-size-fits-all offerings. Jess had recently gone freelance, along with a lot of others who were excellent at their jobs. Soon an idea hatched to create a new flexible and remote workforce, all the benefits of an agency without the overheads and the bonus of bringing some really talented marketing freelancers together. And so The Doers was born!
Share your perks - what do you enjoy most about working for yourself and why?
The biggest perks of running The Doers for me are flexibility, creativity, and learning.
First and foremost I love what I do and a huge part of that comes from being able to do it around my family. It’s so outdated and frankly exhausting to be stuck in the rut of a 9-5. I remember the stress of getting me and my kids up and out of the house every morning with the panic of making my train. It made every morning miserable and was absolutely no fun for me or my kids as I transformed into ‘Shouty Mummy’, constantly checking my phone to see if the train was delayed to give me a much-needed 2-minute buffer.
Working for myself might not always be easy but it sure is flexible. I can work when it suits me and when it works for my family. Mostly that's 9.30-3ish around the school run with the odd full day in London or the odd evening of writing. But it’s on my terms and I get to pick my kids up from school every day. I get to know their friends and teachers and not miss out on these important years and milestones. For me, this is absolutely priceless.
Secondly, I love having an idea and running with it. No sign-off needed, no processes that put a great idea through the mill until it’s either too late or no longer a good idea but a safe idea. I love being able to just go for it, to try things out and see if they work without the rigmarole of too many cooks. After working in marketing and PR agencies for so long and even worse the structure and restraint of a charity it’s very refreshing to have an idea and see it executed that very same day. VERY satisfying!
Finally, I am always, and I mean ALWAYS, learning. I’ve already learned so much from running The Doers. From the business side - looking after our finances, learning about VAT returns and Dividends through to contracts. From keeping more on top of digital marketing than I ever thought I could do, to jumping into the backend of websites and making changes. The list goes on. I also learn new things every day from our super talented inner circle of Doers, from our clients, and from the freelancers we meet from our wider network. I always loved being at school and honestly, every day is a school day at The Doers!
“ I love having an idea and running with it. No sign-off needed, no processes that put a great idea through the mill until it’s either too late or no longer a good idea but a safe idea.”
Share your struggles - what do you find hardest about working for yourself and why? How have you found ways to combat these parts of working for yourself?
Running your own business does come with a fair few struggles, not switching off, no paid leave, and working from home loneliness are mine.
Running your own business is a full-time job and you’re never fully switched off, even when I’m ‘out of office’ my brain is still partly engaged in work. It’s like my fourth baby and I always have parental guilt if I’m not giving it my full attention!
This is then amplified by no paid leave. Gosh, I miss HR reminding me of how many days of annual leave I need to take by the end of the year or else! It feels like a real hurdle to overcome but Jess and I have the benefit of working as a team and with the support of our Inner Circle Doers we’ve made it a focus to make sure we schedule in proper holidays and stick to them! We’re known for using ‘caps lock shouting’ on Slack or WhatsApp when we see each other lingering when we’re supposed to be off!
Another challenge is the sense of loneliness that can come from working for yourself. It’s really easy to slip into bad habits, working in your PJs is fun for one day but it’s not a habit that needs repeating regularly! Having a reason to escape your four walls and put on some jeans is good for the soul! That’s why we hold our monthly ‘We Don’t Do Lonely’ days - a chance for all freelancers and home workers to get together, enjoy the buzz of other people’s company, and bounce ideas around. We’re also big advocates of co-working centres, I regularly work from The Residence in Essex/Herts and we encourage you all to do the same and find one local to you!
What are your top tips for anyone thinking about working for themselves?
Do it! Working for yourself and embedding flexibility and working patterns that work for you makes it all worthwhile. If you can, ease yourself into it. If you can go part-time or freelance for your old employer - do it. It’ll help the transition.
Do sit down and take the time to map out exactly what you do best and what you don’t do. So many people are generalists, and you can be but knowing and owning what you’re great at will help you to stand out from the crowd.
Do think of your finances and plan. It’s important to think realistically about your income and expenses. Put some money aside to see you through the quiet months and remember to put money aside to pay your taxes. Using accounting software like Quickbooks is affordable and will make your life a hell of a lot easier.
Do get a pension. It’s one of the many things that’s overlooked but you should start paying into one immediately. Penfold is great for flexible, self-employed pensions.
Do expect there to be busy periods - like so busy steam is coming out of your ears - and quiet periods where you think you’ll never land another client or project ever again. Work through and enjoy the busy periods and use your quiet time wisely. Work on your business, work your contacts, take some much-needed time out, and DO NOT PANIC!
Do use your network. Let everyone know exactly what you're doing and how to contact you. Tap up old contacts and colleagues, you never know where your next lead is going to come from. Get back onto LinkedIn and ask people to leave you recommendations and testimonials. Your next big project is already out there and you just need to network.
How did you come up with the Inner Circle?
The Doers had been going for almost three years. It was primarily me and Jess and our trusted network of marketing freelancers. We knew we needed to take things up a notch and do things differently to grow the business and take it to the next level. We’d met Adam Wright as we consulted on the marketing for Build That Business, and knew he was just the guy we needed to help us.
Adam helped us to take a much-needed step back from the business and realise we had the people we needed to grow sitting right in front of us! We’ve worked with many freelancers since launching The Doers but a few just clicked with us on another level. They were just as invested in the success of The Doers as we were and it felt like a natural progression to bring them into the fold and give them more of a say. So we created a more official partnership that benefits all of us.
At the moment our Inner Circle is a core group of 8 creative specialists who are all invested in The Doers, helping to grow the business, coming together to deliver fantastic marketing campaigns for our clients, and all sharing in the fun, the highs, the lows, and the spoils. Between us, we cover commercialisation, marketing strategy, project management, brand messaging, graphic design, SEO, social media strategy and activation, influencer marketing, and content strategy. Best of all is we all work brilliantly together and our best work comes when we work as a team.
What does the next year look like for The Doers?
We’ve spent a lot of time rethinking and repositioning our work, bringing the Inner Circle on board, and working more closely together. We've developed five strategy session packages to better support businesses big and small, new and established, and make the most of the skill sets and amazing experience of our team. Over the next year, I’d like to see more of these coming through with a variety of different Doers working on them. We’ve also just started offering power hours with us which are great for smaller businesses and also pack a real punch! Businesses get a lot out of them and me and Jess love doing them!
I’m also keeping everything crossed for a lot more in-person meet-ups and co-working sessions. Working from home and working solo has so many perks but nothing meets all getting together!
What is the best project you’ve worked on at The Doers?
For me, it’s the donation campaign we worked on for disability charity Scope. It was the first big brief we worked on with nearly all our Inner Circle Doers and was almost a test-run of what was to come. We took an exciting brief to create a multi-channel marketing campaign to encourage people to donate their goods and garms to Scope. We created window and till-point posters, a campaign landing page for the website, newsletters, and paid social ads, worked with influencers and content producers, and planned and activated the campaign’s social media channels. We worked really closely as a team on this with Ben, Ben, and Allie and it was a dream to work on and generate increased stock donations for a great charity.
What were you doing this time last year? What have you learned or how have you changed since then?
This time last year I’d not long moved to Essex from London which was a huge step and meant me and Jess weren’t on each other's doorsteps anymore. We were also back in lockdown and very much in Zoom 2.0 mode - the novelty had worn out and we were sick of it! We were working with some very demanding clients who wanted the world for very little money and we were questioning the values of our clients and what that meant to us as a business.
We walked away from those clients and made the decision to prioritise our mental health and to work with businesses that really understood the value that we can bring. We met Adam and started working up what The Doers 2.0 could look like.
A year on I’m buzzing with excitement about what we’ve created, working with clients who trust us and see the results and value in what we do. I’ve learned to speak up when things aren’t quite sitting right and to shout when I’m starting to struggle under the balance of work and family life. Now I’m really feeling the benefits and support of having Jess and a bigger team around me.
