Moving from freelancing to starting your own agency, with Vanessa Keys

This week, Rachel and Lynne chat with agency content director, Vanessa Keys. Vanessa shares her career journey from work experience in glossy magazines, to securing feature writing roles before travelling to London and working in large agencies. Now the head of content and strategy at Slice, her Adelaide-based content agency established with colleague and friend Liz, Vanessa now boasts some big-name clients and a healthy business.

We chat about:

• The difference between freelancing and agency life
• What it's like to come back to your home town
• How large agencies work
• What agencies are looking for from freelancers
• How she pitches for new business
• Where she finds clients
• What being 'content first' means in practice
• The skills freelancers need right now

Here are the tech recommendations Vanessa mentioned:

• ColorZilla is a Chrome extension that includes a colour picker, eye dropper, gradient generator and many additional advanced colour tools.
• Pocket is a Chrome extension that lets you collect articles, videos, and links from across the web and save them in a central place
• SEO META in 1 CLICK is a Chrome extension that allows you to check metadata and display main SEO information for any site across the web
• CMS Detect is a Chrome extension that tells you what CMS a website was built on

Connect with Vanessa at Slice, https://www.slice.agency/ or via Instagram @slice.agency  

Don't forget about The Content Byte Summit (which will include a session on Growing Beyond Solo), from September 12-14, 2024 in Sydney. Sign up for updates for the Summit (or snap up tickets) at our website: https://thecontentbytesummit.com.au 

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au      

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

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: [email protected]  for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co