Vic Hancock Fell - From Charity CEO to Collective Consultancy

This week Jane sits down with former small charity chief exec turned consultant, trainer, and social enterprise co-founder, Vic Hancock Fell. They unpack the power of a long runway, a clear offer, and a values-led business model. 

Vic shares how a master’s degree exposed the gap in sector support for small charities, and how that insight grew into two distinct paths: a personal consultancy of one-to-many leadership training, and Fair Collective, a not-for-profit matchmaking service connecting social good organisations with trusted freelancers.

We dive into the nuts and bolts of the associate model at Fair Collective and  we chat about her income mix of front-loaded course enrolments, evergreen e-learning, speaking, and one-to-one work, that creates stability without a 60-hour week.

This conversation covers the school-run, ADHD-aware planning, the constant pull to overcommit, and the skill of saying no. 

You’ll hear practical tactics for building a supportive community, publishing fair prices, and designing a work week where you can thrive not just survive.

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You can connect with Vic on: 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vichancockfell/
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/vichancockfell/

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Enjoyed this chat? Subscribe, share it with a colleague planning their own freelance journey, and leave a review so more purpose-led charity professionals can find it.

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Jane Curtis, founder of The Charity Freelancing Course, host of The Other Side Podcast and Co-founder of The Rich & Restored Retreat. 

Jane has spent 26 years in the charity sector, is a former events fundraiser, and now supports well over 100 charity sector freelancers to replace their in house salary without working 24/7 through a group mastermind programme, charity freelancing course and 1:1 work. 

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Welcome & Episode Setup

Jane Curtis 0:29

Welcome to the other side of the Charity Freelancers Podcast. I'm Jane Curtis, and this is where we explore the journey from charity professional to thriving freelancer or business owner. Each week I chat with individuals who've made this leap from the charity sector, sharing invaluable practical tips and incredible insights firsthand. So whether you're considering making the move or you're already on your freelance journey, you're in the right place. So grab yourself a cuppa, settle in, and let's dive in to today's conversation.

Vic’s Path From CEO To Freelance

Jane Curtis 1:00

Hi, I'm your host, Jane Curtis, and today on the other side, I'm joined by former small charity co-founder and CEO, now a two-time small business owner, Vic Hancock Fell. Vic has continued to work in the charity sector as a consultant and trainer, supporting small charities, funders, and infrastructure organisations. Vic runs her own consultancy, Vic Hancock Fell Limited, and is also a founder of Fair Collective, a social enterprise that connects social good organisations with talented freelancers and consultants. Welcome to the other side, Vic. Thank you.

Vic Hancock Fell 1:35

I love the name of the podcast. That feels really like uh yeah, a good, a good welcome to the other side.

Jane Curtis 1:43

Yeah. I I know I was a bit worried it might sound a bit like the dark side, but I'm liking that vibe. Maybe it is, maybe it is the dark side. Um so Vic, tell me about your vote motivation, first of all, behind kind of leaving nine to five, maybe a little bit of backstory about what you were doing when you worked in charity, and then why why the why the switch?

Vic Hancock Fell 2:05

Do you know? I don't think it was really necessarily an intentional thing. It happened really gradually for me. So, as you mentioned, I'm a former small charity chief exec, so I've worked in small charities really for my whole career from frontline service delivery through to fundraising through to small charity leadership roles. Um and I went back to university about 10 years ago to do a master's in charity management at Bayes Business School in London, if anybody else is listening and is an alumna. Um and it was there that I really had my like interest piqued about this small charity sector. Because like when I was there in that course, a lot of my peers and colleagues were from massive organisations. A lot of the learning was very specifically geared towards massive organisations, and I was sort of left looking around thinking, hang on a minute, I'm from a smaller organisation. I'm starting to learn more about the fact that we make up the majority of the sector. Like, where are my people? And like, where do I go if I want consultancy support or if I want training or learning that's like relevant for my context as a leader in a smaller organisation? So when I started doing uh so when I was kind of doing that course, I started doing little bits of consultancy here and there. I was kind of implementing what I'd learnt on this course, implementing what I'd learnt through my own professional work. Um, because I was chatting to colleagues and saying, Oh, you know, I've been learning about this and I've just got, you know, taken my organisation through this strategic planning process, or I've just taken my organisation through this kind of MOT of all of all of our core functions. And people would say, Oh, I really need someone to help us do that at our organisation, and you know, might you want to come and do this? So at first it was, you know, just a handful of little consultancy pieces of work each year on top of my day job as a small charity chief exec. Um, and that started 10 years ago. Um, and you know, in those 10 years I've had two kids, two lots of maternity leave, and it was really only about two or three years ago that I decided I'm gonna leave my day job um as a small charity director, and and you know, I think I've got enough momentum um to fully move over to being like fully self-employed. So there there were like several light bulb moments, if you like, but over the course of a decade, so there wasn't ever one moment where I decided I'm gonna become self-employed or I'm gonna do my own thing. I experimented with it for quite a long time, and then there was a like a tipping point where I thought, yeah, I want to work for myself, I want to have like some more flexibility, some more freedoms. Um, and I really loved the excitement and the newness of like doing the uh freelance work and uh the work with Fair Collective. So it was a bit of a leap of faith, but with quite a long run-up.

Jane Curtis 5:05

Yeah, so you were kind of straddling the two for a little while, yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 5:08

For ages, yeah.

Jane Curtis 5:10

Which I think is a really nice entry into freelance, actually. And I I talked to a lot of people who've done that. I did that a bit as well, and I sort of took some interim roles and maternity covers and stuff

Spotting The Small Charity Gap

Jane Curtis 5:20

just to kind of test the water a little bit at the start. Um, yeah, I love that. So, where did you get the idea for kind of what you're doing now? And like how did you identify there was a need for it, I guess? Like what what was that? Talk us through that process.

Vic Hancock Fell 5:34

Yeah, so I do two things, I which you mentioned in the intro. So I run Fair Collective, which is not-for-profit, social enterprise kind of matchmaking agency, if you like, for uh charity freelancers and consultants and charity clients. And then separately to that, I run my own business under my own name, which is mostly one-to-many now, mostly sort of training, small charity leader training, um, and then with some one-to-one consultancy still. So I used to do all of that as just one big kind of lump of work. Uh, and it's only in the last couple of years that I've sort of split those two things and started treating them as really distinct, separate entities, um, which is why, like some people who know about my work often kind of confuse me with Fair Collective and what Fair Collective does with what I do. So I've I've got some work left there to make sure that it's really clear uh who does what. Um, but the idea for Fair Collective came about because I originally I started doing little bits with my own consultancy here and there, and very quickly I realised that there was stuff that I didn't want to do, that I didn't feel good at, that I didn't like, and that I didn't have the capacity to do. So quite often the work that I was doing was like organisational development, like a full MOT of all the different functions of functions of an organisation. And then we'd identify that they needed some specific finance support or they needed some specific comm support or some other sort of function. And I was like, that is not me. I do not want to be getting involved in your budgets. So I started looking around and sort of thinking, who do I know in my community, in my peer network, who I might be able to bring in to help with this particular element or that particular element. And that's kind of where the associate model uh from Fair Collective came about. And then, you know, I think I started with about 10. For years we had about 20 people, and it was just, you know, little bits of work here and there in the background of my part-time role. Um, and then now we've got over a hundred associates. Um, and that that I stepped away from doing a lot of the one-to-one work, and now really my role at Fair Collective is just to steer the ship and kind of, you know, do do some of that strategic thinking that I'm always telling other people they should do. But I don't I don't do it very much. That's like always the case, isn't it? I'm like, oh, I should probably do some of that for my own businesses. Yeah.

Jane Curtis 7:59

Very sort of that, like, do what I say, not what I do, kind of.

Vic Hancock Fell 8:03

Yeah, what that's saying, it's like a mechanic's car is always broken down because yeah, they're not doing it. It's definitely that vibe.

Jane Curtis 8:11

Um, I love that. I like you. There's a lot that you just talked about that I think we really want to sort of dive a bit more into. So um, some of the practical sides, because I have talked

Why Split Consultancy And Collective

Jane Curtis 8:20

to freelancers before who've thought about the kind of associate model and they're either interested in becoming an associate or how it might work if they were the kind of owner of the organisation that has associates, if that makes sense. Um so tell us a bit some of the practicalities of what you had to do in order to kind of get that off the ground. Yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 8:41

So um I think at first it was very much me reaching out to people who I knew and trusted and who I had worked with before. Um, and it and it kept going like that for for a while. Um, you know, when I when I knew that I needed a particular skill set or specialism, I would think, who have I worked with that I trust can do this? And for me, there were a few things. They had to know their stuff, they had to be good at the thing, but they also had to have a certain set of values and principles, and they had to understand the small charity context. And in particular at Fair Collective, like that's what we were started for originally. Now we work with organisations of all different shapes and sizes, from like tiny grassroots organisations all the way up to like international NGOs. But at the time, it was very much targeted at small charities specifically. Therefore, these people that I was bringing in as associates, I needed to know that they understood the context of a small charity and that they weren't going to go into a small charity and be like, so where's your fundraising department? And like, you know, let me speak to your head of finance. And it's like one person being like, Yeah, that's me. All of those things are me. Everything. Yeah, exactly. Um and so now it's a bit more um, you know, we still occasionally sort of will go to people specifically and sort of we like we'll spot someone out in the wild and be like, oh, they they seem great, they seem like they're doing really interesting work, and it's kind of an area where we've got a bit of a gap. Um, but in the middle, we did a big like recruitment drive, which is how we've got most of the people that we've got now, where we actually went publicly. I think it was just me on Twitter back in the days where Twitter was a nice place to be, saying, you know, I we need more associates, we need people with these different skill sets, and people applied essentially. Um so at the minute it's still a combination of like people express interest to us all the time to join. And for anyone listening, we do have an expression of interest form on our website, but we are not like actively looking for new people. Um, so uh, but what we do get people approaching us a lot. Every now and again we have a specific gap in the collective. Like, you know, recently a couple of our finance people have left, so we welcomed in a couple of new finance people, and it's a combination of recommendations from within the collective or like people who've expressed interest, or sometimes we'll do a call out on our socials to say, you know, we're looking for somebody with interest in X, Y, and Z. Um, and a lot of it is based on trust and relationships and recommendations. Um where I'm I'm I am like not big on like paperwork and processes, and I very much like roll with the vibes. You know, I've got I'll listen to my gut and I'm like, yeah, I'm getting a good, you know, feeling from this person. Um so I usually have a bit of a chat with people, find out about their motivations, understand a bit about their work. We get some references usually from a mix of different clients. Like, can we have a small charity client and a big charity client? Maybe we might get some examples of their work. But normally, you know, it's a small world, isn't it? This sector. So normally there's some degree of connection and someone can kind of vouch for someone else. So it's pretty informal, really. And even when we are kind of onboarding, you know, I've got a wonderful colleague, Casey Carlos, who's kind of like our um like ops manager, but just like that person who's just, you know, keeping us uh afloat and steering the ship, and she'll send out all of our information about kind of how everything works and like here's how to do it, how here's how everything's gonna um yeah, work with you as an associate. And we've we've always put on our website from the beginning like how it works. Because so that so essentially Fair Collective earns its money through our associates paying us a 10% referral fee, we have to charge that now, so it's 10% plus that, um, of whatever they earn through getting work through us. Um and we cap that at 12 months. So if somebody finds a piece of work through us and the relationship ends up lasting beyond 12 months, kind of in the interest of fairness, we consider that to then be their client and they keep going.

Building An Associate Model

Vic Hancock Fell 12:45

Um but yeah, that's that's kind of the gist of it. That's how we kind of find people, that's how we we bring them on board, and then once they're on board, um yeah, we we have a monthly meetup, we have a WhatsApp group that we all kind of lean on if we need it, we get together a few times a year in person, not all of us obviously, but you know, some of us. And yeah, it's a really nice community to be part of.

Jane Curtis 13:07

Sounds amazing. So um just so I'm clear that if if if an associate is working with the fair collective, you would it the relationship is between the fair collective and the charity, and the charity would invoice the charity or no.

Vic Hancock Fell 13:23

So that's a yeah, so that's a really important clarification. So we're the matchmakers. So we don't we don't get involved directly with the charity clients. So we um introduce normally two or three. So what what happens is people come, a child a charity client comes to us and they say, I need help with X, Y, and Z. Our client director then puts that out to our relevant mailing list of like fundraisers or finance people or strategy people, and they'll say, We've got potential work with this client. Here's the day rate, because we do standardised day rate ranges based on income level to keep it fair for our associates and our clients. Uh, we usually introduce our clients to two or three different associates to choose from because there's still an element of choice there, and they get to pick based on like, okay, I'm getting a good feeling from that person, or I especially like that person's approach. We then connect them, they contract directly, they invoice directly, we fall back then into sort of a supportive role. So a supportive role for both the client and the associate. So rarely, when things go wrong, inevitably, you know, they do, because people are people and humans are humans and life is complicated and messy. But if anything ever does go wrong, then we would sort of fall into that um supportive uh role for the client to support them or the associate. Um and then the way that the money comes back through into Fair Collective is that the associate says, right, I've finished this piece of work with ex-client, here's the value of the work, and then we invoice them for their 10% referral fee plus the VAT. I see. So it's interesting, and I've we've had the discussion a few times about whether we should actually we should contract directly with the client and then subcontract out to associates. Um, but it would it would overcomplicate our model quite a bit, and the way that it works at the minute works quite well. What it does mean is that like if you look us up on Companies House and look up our um uh annual return, our income looks relatively small because the only amount of income that's coming through our business is the referral fees. Whereas other agencies might be uh billing the client directly and then subcontracting. So like the value of our work last year, you know, was nearly like a million pounds. If you think about the the volume of work that we're putting through to our associates, but because we're only getting 10% of that through our business, it's much smaller. Yeah. Um, but that's that works well for us. It makes me feel really scared to think about something on a bigger scale than what we're currently doing.

Jane Curtis 16:04

Yeah, I mean, that's a really that's ri it's really interesting to hear about the different model because I had always thought that yeah, in order to kind of have associates, you would have to do it the other way. So that's really that's really helped me um understand that. So in terms of kind of the setup that you had to do, did you have to were you a sole trader at the start? Did you have to like create a company? Yeah. Yeah. So that was a kind of bit of admin that had to be done at the start, yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 16:30

It was like a whole mess. Like, you know, I was a sole, I was a sole trader at the beginning, and then it was, and then I set up a um, we set up a limited company. So it used to be called Fair Development back in the day, and it's only been Fair Collective in in name uh for the last few years when we rebranded a few years ago. Uh, and I had a wonderful colleague, Paula, um, who came in while I was on Matt Leave to like help me keep things going, and we decided that would make sense to be a limited company. And then that lasted for a couple of years, and then I was like not sure what I was gonna do. So I closed the company because I was like getting all of the letters from HMRC being like, you need to do this and you need to do that. And I was like, whoa, no. So like reverted back to doing it as a sole trader for a while, and then yeah, just a few years ago, was like, right, I'm doing this now. We're gonna rebrand, we're gonna become, you know, fair collective. Uh so if you look us up on Companies House, like our current legal setup um has only been in place for a few years, but like the entity has been there for a decade, uh, almost a decade. And we're a company limited by guarantee, but we have an asset lock and a not-for-profit clause, uh, which means that we kind of have not-for-profit status. So I knew that I didn't want to be a charity or a CIC, but we've always operated under a social enterprise model, but there's no legal status for a social enterprise. You can be any legal status, but just operate as a social enterprise by donating at least 50% of your profits to your like chosen mission. Um, but a couple of years ago we were thinking like, do we ever want to try and attract funding for any of this pro bono work that we're trying to do? Like, what

How Fair Collective Matches Work

Vic Hancock Fell 18:10

would we need to have in place if we might want to do that? And also um I just wanted to take it that step further from being a social enterprise to being like a full, full not-for-profit entity. So we've got three unrelated directors. There's myself and my lovely colleagues, Janine Edwards and Amber Shotten, um, who I've done a lot of work with on like small charity stuff over the years and who are just like thoroughly good eggs. Um, and um, and then we have yeah, the asset lock and the not-for-profit close. So like there are no stakeholders, shareholders, no one's like taking um any profits out of the organisation. At least 50% of the profits are spent on pro bono work or direct donations, and the rest of it is like brought back into the business to you know pay for the website or promote thing.

Jane Curtis 19:02

Yeah. Wow. Sounds amazing and and really innovative. I love it. Um so just tell me quickly about kind of how, in terms of yourself as a person, um how you kind of make your monthly income and what that split is between the two things that you're doing.

Vic Hancock Fell 19:20

Yes, so like fair collective is um not the bulk of it at all, actually, even though we've just spent like the last 10 minutes talking about all the fair collective stuff. So I I kind of pick and choose, like I I I will either pay myself for like a couple of days of month, a couple of days a month from Fair Collective. Um, and I'm like, you know, very happy to be like transparent about this. It's never more than about a thousand pounds a month. Like if I I would usually spend a like a day and a half, maybe two days a week on Fair Collective stuff. Um, but I would I would always cap whatever I'm kind of taking from the business in terms of running it at about a thousand pounds a month. Quite a few months I'll you know, I'll do I'll not take it quite often because my other business is paying me well enough, and I'll talk about that in a minute, to live. And obviously for me, I want as much as possible staying in Fair Collective so that I can have more in the profit pot so that we can be doing more of the pro bono stuff. Um, so when needed, I'll pay myself for the work that I do at Fair Collective, and when it's not needed, I'm quite happy just to kind of let it do its thing, like step back a little bit if I can, just kind of keep a light touch um hand on it. You know, I've got a fabulous team of like my client director, Lucy and Casey, who does the ops management. Um, and yeah, so quite often I'll be like, I don't need anything from Fair Collective this month, like just put I'll you know contribute whatever I've done in in in terms of paid uh time into the profit pot. Um and it hasn't always been that way, like the bulk of my income did through come through Fair Collective um for for the most part over the last few years. But in since I've set up Vit Cancock Fell Limited and I've done kind of more of my work independently through that other business, um, then I don't need to rely on being paid for my work at Fair Collective as much. So my other business, like I mentioned, it's like it's one to many trainings. I do an annual online training program called Small Charity Leaders Club and that runs from April to October each year. Um, it's once a year, so that I've got the rest of the year to like breathe and uh not be worrying about like constantly launching. And then I've got a um, and I, you know, I know I'm and I and I make like a decent chunk of income at the beginning of the year through that because it's sort of front-loaded, like people sign up between January and April, and that kind of sees me through for a few months. Um and kind of gives me that start to the year that means I'm able to have like more flexibility throughout the rest of the year. Um, and then I've got like a an e-learning course that's kind of um the the idea is like it's some passive income for me, right? I'm just not not very good at marketing it. So like there's this amazing correlation between when I talk about it and when I sell them. It's really weird. Wow.

Jane Curtis 22:21

I know actually telling people about what you do.

Vic Hancock Fell 22:24

Yeah, I know. Um, so yeah, that brings me in a bit of income, and I've been really lucky to be able to like sell bulk um orders of that to like funders or infrastructure organisations who are kind of buying it on behalf of small charities, which has been awesome. So Lloyd's Bank Foundation use it, Restless Development use it, some local infrastructure organisations use it. Um, and so that's been kind of an amazing and like unexpected. Like I hadn't I kind of hadn't didn't have that in my mind when I created it, which is great. Amazing. Um, and then I do odds, you know, odds and sods of one-to-one consultancy still uh under my own name rather than through Fair Collective. So for the most so like most of my working week is Vic work, and like a little bit of it is is Fair Collective. And um yeah, I'm able to like mostly earn a living

Legal Structure & Not‑For‑Profit Choices

Vic Hancock Fell 23:20

through my Vic work, through my training courses, and like occasionally sort of you know speak at a conference or um that sort of thing. And yeah, I mean my goal ideally is that you know I'm less and less involved in in Fair Collective, like I'm really enjoying it just sort of thriving in it in itself. And you know, we've got this collective of a hundred odd associates, and while they're not necessarily all managing it as an entity day in, day out, everybody is sort of contributing to it somehow by like bringing work in or recommending us to someone, and it's really just kind of an organism of its own. Yeah. And I would quite like for it to just keep going in that direction and for me to just slowly step out of the room and be like, okay, it looks like you've got it all under control. Yeah. Well, like a sort of cooperative almost, like everybody's got a stake in it, yeah. That's how it that's how it works, yeah. Like, you know, we're not officially a cooperative, but that's very much the way that we run things.

Jane Curtis 24:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Talk me through what a normal working day is in your world, if there is such a thing.

Vic Hancock Fell 24:24

Yes, there is. So I um I work Monday to Thursday, and I say that I have Fridays off, but I am absolutely awful at holding that boundary. Um, my husband also has a Friday off work, and um I'm I'm really terrible because you know, we're supposed to have all these plans of like doing nice dates and like doing stuff to, you know, hang out with each other a bit without the kids around, and every week I'm like, oh, I just need to squeeze in this quick meeting and I just need to do this thing. And that that's completely my own fault because I overcommit, and then because I do have quite limited working hours for the rest of the week, things very easily get sort of squeezed in or pushed in on those days where I'm meant to be off. But um I do the school run most mornings, which means that I'm kind of up and out of the house by quarter past eight and usually back by about quarter past half past nine. Um and so I don't tend to start any meetings or work until kind of ten. Um and I need that kind of buffering time to get in before I start anything. Um, and I usually work until about two, half two when I need to set off on the school run again. So, you know, I've really got between ten and two o'clock, you know, four days a week, which is not a lot of time. Um, and my current situation is that I run Fair Collective, although like Touch, uh, and my Vic Hancock Fell stuff. Um, and then I'm also a trustee, a chair of trustees at two small charities. Um, so it's a lot, you know, and that's completely my fault. And I'm like a people-pleasing, over-committed, over-committal kind of ADHD woman. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that combination. Um, so yeah, I'm I am making some changes to be less committed. And you know, after a decade of being a trustee somewhere, I'm stepping away from my trustee roles um and trying to get a bit of a better balance because my typical day looks like, to be completely honest, like back-to-back calls, meetings, kind of cramming in all of the other work that I forget is actual real work. Like I have to respond to these emails, or I have to write up these notes, or I have to, and to me in my head that doesn't translate as I need time for that. Do you know what I mean?

Jane Curtis 26:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do know what you mean. I mean, I think there's something so interesting about when you've got quite a compressed day and you can get so much done. Like honestly, I don't know how I used to feel like seven and a half hours in an office. I'm not really sure what I was doing. Um, but I I you know, and I I feel like I I love having that school drop off and the pickup because it really does bookend my kind of day. It's like hard stop. Um, but yes, to the day dates, it's very it sounds very familiar. We've also had a conversation about that. Um, me and my husband about Fridays. So we need to also make that commitment. Yeah, yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 27:20

And I I've been working with an ADHD coach this year, actually, through Access to Work, um, she's called Ange. And she's been really helpful in supporting me to like look at my week and translate it into real life because all I see are all these little blocks on my calendar, and I'm like, well, technically I can fill all those blocks with stuff because that's just blocks on a screen. But Ang's really helped me to recognise, like, yeah, but that's also you in real life, and you can't just back to back tasks and

Income Mix & One‑To‑Many Strategy

Vic Hancock Fell 28:00

meetings and video like when are you gonna eat lunch? When are you gonna go and have a wee? Like, when are you gonna go and eat like get some water or like take some stuff to the post office? And yeah, so I'm I am it's a con it's a sort of work in progress, but I'm really learning how to like plan around a real human life and not a calendar on Google.

Jane Curtis 28:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of that is that nine to five mindset, I think. You know, that that's that's kind of how a lot of organisations operate. Um and it's and and you have to almost shed that skin when you become your own kind of boss, you know, and start working for yourself. It's like that's not what I want anymore. But I still sometimes catch myself out where I'm coming back from a swim or something in the morning and I'm like panicking because I'm not on my desk at 9.30. And it's like, what the fuck? I know I don't I don't know where this has come from. This is really, but it's so hardwired in us. It is, yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 28:57

And you know, I'm exactly the same. And like you say, I don't know where it comes from. But you know, we've been kind of institutionalised since school to think that you know, we go somewhere at s at a certain time and we stay there until a certain time. And you know, at school that's nine till three, at work that's nine till five. And I still find it really uncomfortable, like you've said, to like yesterday I took a day off, right? I went and got a haircut, I went and got my colour analysis done and like got a little personal styling session. It's like, oh, this is so fun. But I was like, this is so naughty. Oh my god, like it's a Tuesday, like, oh my goodness. Um, but it's we're we're really hardwired to think that way, and it is very hard to shake it.

Jane Curtis 29:44

Yeah, very much so. It is. It's a whole it's a whole journey. Um, I have found. Uh talk me through some uh challenges that you faced since you've worked for your for yourself.

Vic Hancock Fell 29:59

Um Definitely the overcommitting. I think I did that anyway in employment, but there are sort of fewer opportunities to overcommit when you're employed because you're doing a job and that's your job. Like you can't necessarily I mean, yes, you could maybe say yes to things more, but I find with self-employment that um there are like fewer boundaries and like there's the sort of the parameters are not quite the same. So if somebody approaches me for a piece of work, I can you know that the people pleaser in me and the overcommitter and the person who can't really sense how long things are gonna take will just be like, Yeah, sure, I can do that next week. Great, next week, you know, I can I can squeeze that in. Um, so definitely the overcommitting, and in the same way, you know, in the same sort of um way that running a smaller organisation or a smaller charity, you have to become that sort of chief everything officer. I really struggle with that in running my own businesses as well. You know, I don't like the finance stuff, it's not my strong suit. I want to be like doing the ideas and the things and the exciting stuff, and you know, having to submit your tax returns and having to, you know, understand about all of the uh sort of policy like rules and regulations and things like what's this thing about us having to do ID now if you've got a business and just like yeah, you know, all of that sort of stuff I I don't like. Um there's loads that I love about it, but yeah, it's not my favourite to to be responsible for everything. Um and yeah, kind of not really having anybody officially kind of at your level or around you being like you've probably said yes to too much, like you need to chill out a bit. Luckily, I do have that from my colleagues because I've specifically requested them to sort of say to me, Whoa, yeah, you've overcommitted, or like let's just look at your calendar and check whether this is feasible. Um so yeah, I I uh I'm pretty good at sort of um taking breaks now because it's kind of enforced. Like I take the summer holidays off school, yeah. Off work because I have to be with the kids who are off school. But if I didn't have them sort of and that reason, I don't think I'd be very good at taking leaves and stuff. Yeah, and but part of the problem is I love it. Like that's the double-edged sword, I think, sometimes of being self-employed and doing something that you love because it's fun. And I want to do it, and I want to do why wouldn't I do more of it if I love it and I can be paid for this work and and I can help people? Why wouldn't I say yes? But then you you lose yourself in yeah, yeah.

Jane Curtis 32:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually saying no is such a it's such a skill. Oh my god, I hate it. And it's it's so powerful, isn't it? When you start to like either I it's uh you have to kind of give yourself that permission, don't you? And I I have been testing that out a little bit more. I'm still not great at it, um like absolutely not. But um quite often I'll say yes and then a week later I'll go, you know, actually I don't think I can. Um but actually I should just be being like upfront um yeah to begin with. But yeah, so we talked a little bit there about kind of you've got some colleagues that you um can kind of lean on, but what other networks and communities um have you found useful since you've been self-employed?

Vic Hancock Fell 33:33

So my fair collective associate community is like where I would le always lean on um kind

A Realistic Workweek With Boundaries

Vic Hancock Fell 33:40

of as a first stop. They are amazing, and you know, it's this curated group of people who have who I've found or who have found us who share the same values and are just like really a lovely group of people. Um I think because of that, I haven't really I haven't really felt the need to like lean that much into other spaces because I've I've had this like inbuilt group of you know a hundred odd people that I can I can kind of get support from if needed. Um you know what certainly when I was a small charity chief exec, there were like Facebook groups for small charity CEOs, and I found those spaces super helpful. I am in a couple of the um like freelancer um sort of Facebook groups, um, and but but I don't I don't tend to and I did used to go there a lot in when I was sort of starting out, but um I I don't feel I need it quite as much now. Um and so when I do need it, I'll reach out to like a specific person.

Jane Curtis 34:43

Yeah.

Vic Hancock Fell 34:43

Um which is a really nice position to be in, you know, when you've kind of you know you're a few years down the line, um, you don't necessarily sort of feel the need for that kind of big community anymore. I I just know that I've got a handful of people now that if I have a question on a certain topic, I can go to them and they'll and they'll help. And that's really nice. It's like a created little support network.

Jane Curtis 35:07

Yeah, I love that. You've created that yourself, it's brilliant. Um, so what advice would you give to someone who is thinking or following in your footsteps and leaving their nine to five?

Vic Hancock Fell 35:19

It's so hard to know without like knowing people's circumstances. I I really liked the gradual approach. Um, it really worked well for me in my sort of phase of life. And I I did the gradual sort of, you know, my day job was five days a week, then it was four days a week, then it was three days a week, then it was two and a half days a week, you know, like it was a really gradual kind of um decrease to the to the point there where to the point that when I actually finally made the leap over into full self-employment, it didn't really feel like a really big scary thing. Um and I had I had work kind of, you know, lined up and I had an idea of, okay, I've been doing this for a few years now, and I think I can replace my income. And you know, I mean I'm like a nervous, anxious person. I I wouldn't say I'm like I'm not really risk averse, but I'm certainly not like a massive risk taker. So for me, for the for the nervous system and for the anxiety, that gradual approach felt really, really manageable. I guess the other advice is yeah, just to like create those connections and find your support network and just have, if you can, like find people to have honest conversations with. Because I still know I still get sucked into seeing people who are like talking about how they're making all this money and how it's great, and I'm like, that's that's great. Like, and there's part of me that really like wants that too, but also sometimes I'm having those amazing months and sometimes I'm not, and I kind of just want to have like a real conversation with someone who says, God, it started great this year, but now I'm broke. Like now, you know, now like the money's stopped coming in, or the the work seems to have dried up, or I'm just having like a bit of a funk like moment where I just I'm not really feeling it. So yeah, I'd say like feel inspired by the people who are smashing it and doing great, but like find some of the real people who'll also be like, Oh my god. It's being open to both, isn't it?

Jane Curtis 37:20

Because I think it can work conversely as well. But if you're in a lot of the groups where perhaps there is a bit more of the kind of everything's crap at the minute, you know, it's like it's quite easy to get pulled into that kind of negative headspace, which can really affect how you're operating as well. So it's it you're absolutely right. It's kind of it's a mix of both, isn't it?

Vic Hancock Fell 37:41

Yeah, the balance, definitely, because I'm definitely not about that like scarcity mindset. Like I'm you know, I'm not my I'm sort of learning more about that. And uh I'm on a like female entrepreneur kind of accelerator type of group at the minute with a woman called Mae James who's fantastic, and it's mostly non-charity sector people, and it's been really like eye-opening to sort of learn from people in different sectors, and there's someone on that course who's um like a manifestation coach, and I'm like, this is so interesting, and yeah, I think there's definitely something to be said for like being in those aspirational spaces and being in those spaces where you're speaking to people who are like very much in that like abundance mindset of this is possible and we can do this, and I can have the things that I want. Um I think you just need, like you say, the balance of like someone who you can talk to about reality as well, if if things are like not feeling like that for you.

Jane Curtis 38:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally get that. Um, but just before we finish it up, uh, what do you do for fun? What is what is fun for this?

Vic Hancock Fell 38:51

Oh my god. This is uh I've got like such a lame answer to this, which is it's a work in progress for me, is the total honest answer. So I think if you love your work, there's a real difficulty for me in like separating who I am outside of work with who I am at work because I actually love this. Like I'm I'm I feel really privileged to like do for work something

Challenges: Overcommitting & Operations

Vic Hancock Fell 39:20

that I actually really enjoy and you know consider like I wouldn't call it a hobby, but um do you know what I mean? It's like who I'm if I don't talk about my work to people, I don't talk about like the social justice stuff that I'm really interested in and like this work that I'm doing, like what are my hobbies and interests? I'm also like a mum of a five and an eight-year-old. So if I'm not working, usually I'm parenting. Yeah, what what brings me a lot of joy in what I like try to do when I can is I like to go and listen to live music, I like to go to art and art gallery, I like to go to the cinema, I like to see friends, and you know, it doesn't happen as often as it could and should, but I think I'm at that phase of life where like if I'm if I'm being semi-successful and raising my two kids and like we've got a nice sort of family situation, and if I'm running these two businesses like semi-successfully, I'm satisfied with that. Like if I can go out to an art gallery once a weekend, uh you know, once a month at the weekend with a friend, or like meet someone for a coffee on a random Tuesday, or like go for go and see a gig every now and again, and go to the theatre with a friend. Like, I'm satisfied with that. You're winning. Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I would love to have a hobby, but I also think there's something about the ADHD brain. Like, I don't I think the last time I had a hobby was when I was like 15 and I used to like horse riding. Like I can't think of anything that I've been into since then. I just can't be asked, that's terrible, isn't it? But like, you know, I kind of admire people who are like, I'm into crochet or like that. It's like, oh, that's great for you, but yeah, no.

Jane Curtis 40:58

I know I always used to say like reading, and I was like, that's not really a hobby. It's like you just have to read, you just have you know, every day. But um that's great though.

Vic Hancock Fell 41:06

Like I've got a stack of books on my bedside bedside table that are just there to like put my coffee on. Like it's embarrassing that they've been there for so long. So I'll one of these reads, yeah. But there's just you know, there's not a lot of um, there's not a lot of like life time, you know, in between parenting and working and and to be honest, at the minute, like a lot of my bandwidth and headspace is taken up by social justice stuff. Um, you know, every Friday um after school and before school, we do a little uh protest for Palestine with the kids outside of their school. And you know, I'm in those WhatsApp communities trying to do what I can in that space. And that that's that takes up you know a fair amount of my time and and headspace at the minute. And so you know that and that's an interest of mine. It's something I feel I like have to do, but it feels like a really important part of my life as well.

Jane Curtis 42:02

And so and modeling that to your kids too, I think is epic. Um, what was the last gig you went to? Super quick.

Vic Hancock Fell 42:10

Oh, the last gig. Oh, I went to see We Are Scientists, if you remember them from back in the day. I went to see them at a tiny little so like working men's club, like a social club in Sheffield, and it was super fun, and it was full of like elder millennials like drinking their kind of pints of pints of bitter. Well, yeah, and cups of tea with their earplugs and ear protection sitting down, and yeah, it was it was fun.

Jane Curtis 42:39

Amazing. I love that. Um, how can people find out more about you and sign up to what you do?

Vic Hancock Fell 42:46

And yeah, so I think I'm probably the only Vic Hancock Fell on LinkedIn. I gratefully upgraded my last uh my maiden name to a double barrel, which makes me more findable on the internet. So um you can find me on there and then yeah, Fair Collective's website. Uh if you Google Fair Collective, you'll find it. And then my other website is just my name, vichancockfell.co.uk. Um uh but yeah, I think if you if you just Google my name, hopefully you will find the right place. Amazing.

Jane Curtis 43:18

Yeah. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our chat. It's been it's been brilliant. Thank you.

Vic Hancock Fell 43:25

I actually forgot for a minute that we were recording a podcast and just thought that we were like having a little chat. So I look forward to listening back to this and seeing what on earth I said.

Jane Curtis 43:34

It's great for me as well, because I'm so nosy. I'm like, just tell me everything, you know, under the guise of a podcast. But um, thank you very much. Thank you. That's a wrap on another episode of the other side. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a colleague who might be thinking about their own freelance journey. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Remember, freelancing doesn't have to be a loan-only journey. Whether it's joining communities like the Charity Freelancer Chat or signing up to the Charity Freelancing course or simply reaching out to former colleagues, connection is key to thriving as a freelancer. You can find all the links and resources we mentioned today in the show notes. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, where you can also sign up to the Charity

Networks, Community, And Support

Jane Curtis 44:20

Freelancing course waitlist. Until next time, keep exploring what's possible on the other side.