Nick Baines
“When you land a big gig you ask yourself, can I really do this? Even though you know you can. You also realize along the way that most people are blagging their way through it too.”
Nick Baines
Copywriter
The gig economy has given rise to all kinds of jobs where if you are resourceful, knowledge- able and passionate, anything is possible. Freelancing or contracting means you can create a situation where work fits in and around your lifestyle rather than chasing a career and trying to fit personal life in and around that. Nick is passionate about food, drink, not wearing button-ups to work and being able to take vacations whenever he wants, so he designed him- self that lifestyle.
He’s a writer published across The Times of London, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and has a roster of clients including some of the best wine companies in the world. He turned a food blog into a career and so I was excited to chat to him about his journey especially since he was my editor on this project.
Jonathan: All right, so what do you do now?
Nick: Mainly copywriting for brands and businesses, but I dabble in all areas of writing and journalism. I do quite a bit of strategy and advertising concepts, and quite a bit of sales based email marketing too, triggered email flows and direct mail. It’s pretty varied.
How long have you been doing this?
To certain degrees for probably about 13-14 years. I worked at a travel magazine, but that folded after I was there nine months. At the time I’d just moved into a new flat with my then girlfriend and was really getting into cooking. This was around 2007, and I decided to start a food blog when they were kind of an emerging thing. I used it as an outlet, but because I knew how the magazines worked, how we commissioned writers, and remembered how desperate we would be for fresh content every single month, I just thought I’d start pitching some articles to food mags.
It can be demoralising pitching and getting rejections, but it’s a numbers game really and I just kept hustling, coming up with ideas and emailing editors (though assistant editors or editorial assistants often worked out better). This got me a few stories published in smaller magazines and local papers, but then I just kind of went for it. The process of pitching is the same whether it’s a small time magazine or a national newspaper, although the fees and profile that comes with it is way better. I dug around online and found the right editors for the food sections and just started sending stuff into The Times and The Guardian. I thought I’d just aim right at the top, aim high and just go for it.
An editor at The Times eventually commissioned me for something real small, this little tiny regular side-bar segment of around 150 words. I wrote the little piece, but then they pulled the food supplement before it ever got published. The editor was super nice and knew how hard I’d been hustling for a break and asked me if I had any ideas. I was then reading, and researching stuff on pub snacks for one of my blogs and just kind of threw that out there to him, not really thinking it was very solid in its present state. Three weeks later it’s a double spread feature in The Times and yeah, that was really cool. I was able to get other work off the back of that for other titles. It was definitely a turning point for me. Later that year I did another big feature for The Times on filter coffee. This was around the time when lots of hipster coffee shops and things in London were starting to kick in and there was a definite move into filter coffee from your standard flat white. That one did me a lot of favors as a lot of people read that. I later found out it was a really important piece and turning point in the coffee industry too. I had to stick with it though. Although I was starting to earn a little from it, I was working in pubs in the evenings, or laboring on construction sites, and doing all kinds of other jobs on the side, whilst still hustling on my food writing every day trying to find fresh ideas.
So that kind of obsession was the thing that sort of got you to a place where you had an understanding of the industry?
Yeah, and I’m definitely that way inclined. Just obsessing, spending every bit of time on it. I love that feeling of not knowing and learning everything about a new subject. I’m the same with any interest whether it’s surfing, yoga, food, I just totally go down the rabbit hole.
Did you study for any of this?
Not really. I think maybe that’s why I’ve always had this feeling of having a lot of catching up to do. I wasn’t bad at school, I just, especially in year 10/11, those years before doing GCSEs, I felt fairly isolated. I remember doing the careers advice sessions around this time. I must have said I enjoy working outside on the questionnaire because they said I should be a refuse collector, a bin man! Was that really the best career match to present to a kid? That was the moment when I switched off at school and headed down my own path.
I left at 16 years old and had a job with some money in my pocket, working in a factory packing boxes. I kind of did this so I could take some time to figure out what I wanted to do. I then travelled for a couple of years, some winters spent in the mountains snowboarding, but felt that I needed something more. That gave me this feeling of needing to catch up. You know that’s where the imposter syndrome starts, I guess. I still have it. Especially when you land a big gig you ask yourself, ‘can I really do this?’ Even though you know you can. I’m a lot more in check with it now though. I’ve done a lot of stuff now. With experience, you also realize that most people are blagging their way through it too and everyone’s in the same boat.
Luckily, I’ve learnt a lot on the job around the processes and ways of writing effective copy that can persuade people to shift behavior. I learned so much from this one guy who said, you can produce the best, most emotive writing you want, but in commercial copywriting we need to persuade a person to do something, rather that just make ourselves sound good. That shifted my perspective a lot, and helped my copywriting tons. I started putting out copy that actually changed how brands or products were being received.
Was The Times article the moment where you were like, oh my god, like this is actually working now?
Yeah, that was also the time when I actually believed in my own abilities for the first time, like, if it’s good enough for them, then that’s pretty serious. Like a seal of approval.
What would be one or two things you would tell yourself as a teenager?
Get in tune with your own rhythm, don’t try to match someone else’s. Try to relax and prioritise your own mental health and wellness. Sounds a bit cheesy, but I think it’s just too easy to prioritise everything else and forget about what you actually need yourself. I’ve got a history of being kind of ploughing ahead on things like I’m running out of time, which eventually led to anxiety and depression. It took me a long time to figure myself out and realise what I’d been neglecting.
Obviously right now in the middle of the Coronavirus quarantine lockdown, being a freelancer you’re usually the first ones to go on pause or get axed by agencies, or organisations. If this downturn would have happened to me, even three years ago, I’d have probably had a breakdown. You have to realize that work fluctuates, it goes up and down but you need to lean into the quiet times to recharge just as much as the busy times to work. I’ve definitely fallen victim to spending quiet times stressing about no work, and that way you never get a break from thinking about work. Especially being freelance, you can have an amazing six-month period and then a quiet couple of months. But you eventually get used to it. There’s this cool saying, the river rises and falls, but it always still runs to the ocean. I kinda like that.
I’d want to reassure myself that it’s ok not to conform, hold fast on that. Even at school when everyone got jobs at Tesco,
I pushed back from that as you had to wear a shirt. I hated shirts and when I was a little kid I actually had this weird phobia of buttons, haha. So I always found jobs that suited
me and how I wanted to be first. I quit a pretty sweet gig in a bar once because they brought in staff shirts too. I’ve always wanted to live my own way and on my own terms. Whether it’s being able to bounce on travel writing assignments, or just taking extended holidays working remotely whenever I want, I never wanted to have to ask permission from a boss to be able to do what felt right. I always worried about what other people thought of me, massively. If I could go back, I would say just worry way less. Don’t worry as much about what other people think and what you’re going to do tomorrow. All the good things in my life fell into place and they haven’t necessarily been planned.