Episode 65: Vaughan Simons

Vaughan has been working on the web for 20 years, after falling into it by accident, and with WordPress since 2006, which was more deliberate. He's been freelancing since 2014 specializing in web design and web content as Pilcrow and Pixel.

Introducing Vaughan Simons

Vaughan has been working on the web for 20 years, after falling into it by accident, and with WordPress since 2006, which was more deliberate. He’s been freelancing since 2014 specializing in web design and web content as Pilcrow and Pixel.

Show Notes

Website | Pilcrow and Pixel

Twitter | @pilcrowpixel

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives. And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 65.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Vaughan Simons. Vaughan has been working on the web for 20 years after falling into it by accident and with WordPress since 2006, which was more deliberate. He’s been freelancing since 2014 specializing in web design and web content as Pilcrow and Pixel. Hello, Vaughan.

Vaughan: Hello.

Liam: Hey, Vaughan. Thanks for joining us today. We’re so glad you’re here. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself, please?

Vaughan: Good to see you. Yes, more or less what the introduction says. I’m Vaughan, I live and work in London. I’ve lived here for, oh gosh, over 25 years. I originally come from Summerset in the southwest of England which is a very rural area. So I moved to a town where I lived all my life up until I was about 18, 20 of only 4000 people. Now I’m living in London which is eight to 10 million so quite a big difference. I suppose like lots of people, I sort of got interested in computers in the ’80s with the personal computer revolution. I guess, then I had things like Spectrum, would mess with that until late evenings. But then completely grew out of it when I was about 14, 15. Didn’t touch a computer again for over 10 years until I got a job at BBC in 1997, which I kind of fell into by accident. The new unit, doing stuff related to the BBC website which has only just launched in 1997. Yeah, I kind of went from there really. I kind of learned the basics of the web and messed around a bit with that, started my own blog a couple of years later on Blogger where everyone was, something like that. Messed around about for a few more years and then got into WordPress in about 2006, started messing with sites of other people. I worked at BBC until 2012 and I said, “Redundancy.” Then after a couple of the jobs for charity, I decided to go freelance and then try web design and web content. I included web content because the stuff I was doing in BBC was primarily editorial, I was writing content for websites and editing other people’s content. I wasn’t designing stuff or doing the coding or anything like that. That’s where my web content background comes from.

Tara: I’m excited to hear or speak to somebody who started working at the BBC when they had and they were just starting to have a website. That’s a pretty big feather in your cap, it’s a pretty cool thing to have that in your background. It must have been exciting there, I imagine. If you look back at what their website was in 1997-’98, probably quite different.

Vaughan: It was fairly exciting. I wasn’t involved in the launch but I was involved in a very small department at the time that happened to be connected to the web, but they did only launch their website in 1997 thanks to– I think it was a mix of– they decided to launch it after the death of Princess Diana, which was lots of people were going to the web to search for information, and also the 1997 election when Tony Blair won by the huge landslide. And those websites they launched very popular, and it wasn’t long after they decided to launch their website. I was in the early part of that, yes.

Tara: That’s really interesting. It’s like a Forrest Gump thing, I don’t know if you know Forrest Gump. You’re at this kind of pivotal point in history, that’s really interesting. How do you like living in London growing up in a small town?

Vaughan: I’m kind of used to London now. I’m still not entirely settled here. I still don’t feel like I really belong here. On the other hand, I haven’t visited Summerset since 1989, actually, when I moved to London. I wouldn’t know Summerset now if I went back to it. I think I’m a small-town boy who’s been transplanted to London and then kind of get on with it here. I like the fact that there’s lots of people around but I also don’t like the fact that there’s so many people around here. It’s kind of a love and hate relationship.

Liam: Yeah, especially in London. I spent a year in London. I was in Southfield before I moved out to Thames Valley. Where in London are you living and are you involved with the London WordPress community?

Vaughan: I started off in West London near the BBC at that time, but then moved to Clapham in Southwest London in 2006 where I’ve been since. I’m not really involved in WordPress community much. I am woving to get more involved with it but it’s more of a social thing. I sort of mentioned when we were talking that I’ve got Asperger Syndrome, which makes socializing quite a stressful experience. I’ve also got a physical disability so places that you go, it can be a bit limiting both physically and neurologically.

Liam: Absolutely.

Vaughan: It’s something I want to get involved with but I think it’s going to take me a bit of a leap to do it. I mean, I’m very active on Slack and things like that but actually going to things and meeting people is sort of nervewracking for me.

Liam: No, I understand that and that was not a pressure to ask. It was just an inquisitive ask so thank you for sharing that.

Vaughan: No, no, it’s fine.

Liam: You said that you kind of stumbled onto the web but you deliberately dove into WordPress in 2006. Tell me about that, would you?

Vaughan: Well, I had a blog on Blogger and then Movable Type, and I can’t remember, I think Movable Type was just getting on my nerves for some reason so I launched a new blog. I moved to my old blog which has been on Blogger and Movable Type and I decided to try this newfangled WordPress thing. At the same time, I kind of self-taught some various pages on the web, basics of CSS, and I was like, “Oh, this CSS stuff is good.” Because you’re not sticking in lots of code within the content, you can actually separate your content and your design, which really appeals me. That’s when I kind of started using WordPress, just the scenes really that I downloaded off the repo and got to know it that way. And then I was running my own blog, it’s still out there somewhere, I’m not giving you an URL because it’s terrible and it hasn’t had its design changed since 2006.

Liam: [laughs] Now I really want the URL?

Vaughan: No, no, no. I’m afraid not.

Liam: Alright, fair enough.

Vaughan: And it wasn’t under my name either so it was a complete change from my previous build where I had my name on it. I went through something to look semi-anonymous. So I had a blog on WordPress from 2006. It was quite– even by the standards of then, there’s no responsiveness or anything. It was quite a nice and minimal site and I did a lot of tweaking to it. And in 2009, I actually launched an online literary magazine called Kill Author, which you can look up. Again, not responsive to time, it is quite nice design that I put there. I kind of managed it and did edit of it completely anonymously myself, only revealing at the end after about 20 issues that it’s me who is behind it. I did that for about three years, until 2012. Also, in that time, I did a couple of other sites with people, friends, things to friends. Nothing paid or anything like that. So it wasn’t really– I left the BBC and I had a couple of rather unsatisfactory jobs that didn’t really suit me. So I thought maybe it’s time to try and do this thing freelance and see how far I get.

Liam: So within your freelance business now, Vaughan, what services are you providing? Is it content, is it theming? Is it a little CSS? Talk us through that?

Vaughan: My whole name with Pilcrow and Pixel is kind of– because I do content and design, really. I mean, I don’t really specialize in one or the other. I find that the specialism comes from clients primarily wanting design, so that’s my main part of it. But I do try and impress upon them gently that the content is important. One of the slight frustrations I had with clients was that, “I can do the content, there’s no worry about that.” And then you kind of look at what they’ve done and you think, “No, actually, you could use some help with that.” It’s kind of impressing upon the content is important and it’s not just about sticking keywords everywhere, it’s about having clearly written, clearly structured websites, and that’s the kind of sites– I suppose the things I’d say on my site would be WordPress rep design, content design, which is a sort of concept I’ve only learned about in the last couple of years. It’s definitely something I’ve kind of known about for years because of my BBC background as well, public service websites. Content design and how website’s constructed is very important.

Liam: Just the very name to it, right?

Vaughan: Yeah. I would sort of say, WordPress rep design, content design, and content management. Those are kind of the areas I specialize in. I’d like to do more content work, but again, it’s one of the things where you need to sometimes convince clients that you could do with a bit of help with your content.

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. That can be a challenge. How are you finding clients? You’ve mentioned that meeting new people and getting out and about can present a variety of challenges. But I wonder, within that, what’s been working for you?

Vaughan: I don’t meet clients, I work remotely, completely remotely.

Liam: Sure.

Vaughan: Nobody can actually ask to meet me, which is fine. I just prefer it really. I guess I’m better with clients by email, I can do phone calls and certain conferences if wanted, but I think email. A very clearly structured email, try not to give too much information to the client that will confuse them, try and keep them well-structured, and give them information they need without bamboozling them too much. I work with clients primarily remotely and by email.

Liam: And then, how do clients find you, I wonder, how do new clients find you? Obviously, if you’re emailing existing clients, they know how to find you. But how do new ones come in your door, so to speak?

Vaughan: New ones, I must admit one of my failings, I’m not very good at– I’m just going to get some water if that’s okay.

Liam: Absolutely, take your time.

Vaughan: Yes, clients. It’s primarily referrals but a small-time concern is there’s probably not enough referrals. I have sort of nudged times on this before, current clients, they are referring me. And I have had a few, but primarily, it’s through people discovering my website and liking the sound of what I do. But yeah, I’d certainly like to increase referrals. I think one of the things is the referrals I get aren’t the greatest. I don’t know, I have sort of spoken to other people on Slack about the kinds of referrals they get and I think the referrals I get is kind of clients saying to a colleague, a friend, whatever, “Oh, this person did my website. You should maybe chat with him.” It’s not very persuasive. It’s kind of mild referrals that sometimes get people contacting me. But I have tried things like referrals scheme but it didn’t really. I don’t know whether it’s a British thing, it might be a British thing but it didn’t really go down very well. It’s kind of a, “Well, I refer you anyhow.”

Tara: Yeah, I think it’s hard to find that line between what’s natural and what’s maybe, to put it in your kind way, more persuasive. [laughs] That’s a hard line to walk, and if you think about people that you refer or things that you refer for, I think we try to have an influence on people and give helpful information, if we’re happy with the service or something like that. But I guess there’s a point at which we don’t want to be pushing it to. But it’s good that you’re getting referrals and whether they’re more or less persuasive, I guess, is something that’s not really something you can control.

Liam: Well, maybe we can just share here that Vaughan is available for client work. If you’re looking for help, he’s available.

Vaughan: Thank you for that.

Liam: You’re very welcome.

Tara: That’s good, that’s somewhat persuasive, Liam.

Liam: Thank you. He seems a really nice guy so far. Vaughan, let me ask you one of our signature questions if I may, and it has to do with success and your definition. How would you define success? And if you want to talk about it in a professional sense, personal, or maybe a mix of both, we’d love to hear your definition of success.

Vaughan: My definition of success probably hasn’t changed hugely in years, really, and that is– when I finish a project or a piece of work, I always want to be really satisfied with it and know that the people who are getting that work are satisfied with it, too. I’ve got a few sites in my portfolio, no longer on my own site incidentally, that I’m less than happy with because various things came up in the end. It didn’t quite work out the way I wanted. Sites that are in my portfolio now are ones I can look at and say, “I’m really happy with those.” And the clients are really happy with them. As I said, I’ve got sites from my portfolio that are no longer on my own site that go back to 2013, before I officially started. But the clients feel very happy with and I’m sort of happy with. Certainly, if I was doing them now, I’d do them far better. But for me, it’s always been– when I’ve been in employed work, and in my freelance work, it’s always perhaps something at the end of it that I’m completely satisfied with and the person to whom I’m supplying that work is very satisfied with, too.

Tara: I think that what you’re describing sounds like you have very high standards for yourself and the way that things change over time. Best practices, design changes all the time, too, so yeah, satisfaction is a temporal thing. It’s not necessarily something that you’re satisfied now, but when you look back at it in a few years, you might not remember how satisfied you were.

Vaughan: Exactly, yes. And I do have a slight tendency to perfectionism. I won’t say my projects are the quickest, but I will certainly sit here with a design, looking at– one of my stupidest things is when I’m having a piece of text in a row, is that the spacing above the text is always a couple of pixels less, it certainly seems below it. And I would sit here for two hours looking at it, like, “No, no, it’s got to be–” Not quite two hours but it certainly seems like that sometimes but I would spend time at tiny little details like that. And I’d sit here at the end looking, the client’s not even going to notice that. It’s ridiculous but it’s one of the things that I do rather obsess over.

Tara: Yeah, I think that’s not unusual. I’ve certainly spent a fair amount of time trying to hunt down two pixels somewhere and adding in margins. [laughter] And it’s very satisfying when you eventually find it, but if it takes you an hour, that can be frustrating. And then I’ll do that and then I won’t notice the glaring typo in the headline because I was so focused on that thing.

Vaughan: That’s one fortunate thing I do have. Again, the perfectionism in design comes across the perfectionism in content as well. I will notice tiny little typo six miles away.

Tara: That’s good.

Vaughan: Or misuse of a comma or something.

Tara: Yeah. So you’ve talked a little bit about getting new clients and the referall process and otherwise for that. That sounds like a challenge for you. What would you say is your biggest challenge in running your own business?

Vaughan: Without a doubt, it’s self-marketing. I don’t know, I’m just not confident in doing it. I’ve never been someone who’s very keen on marketing, to be honest, and I think a lot of that comes from my time at the BBC. Because I’m sure you and a lot of your listeners will know the BBC is publicly funded so it doesn’t really have to go into things like marketing. Oddly, it does, but it’s not paid-for marketing. It can’t have adverts and things like that. It’s always rather come across to me, I just don’t have a marketing mindset. And I’ve tried– I’ve listened to every expert under the sun about running your own business and marketing and it just goes in one ear and out the other. I can’t get into that mindset. I just don’t understand it, I really don’t. I’m lousy at it, I wish I was better, I really do, because I’m sure– my business goes okay but I’m sure it should be going a lot better if I could be a bit more upfront and a bit more, “This is what I do. This is why you need it. Blah, blah, blah.” I’m just not that way inclined.

Tara: There’s a lot written about it and certainly in the freelance run your own business, entrepreneur website, agency world, there’s a lot written about how to market, how to get new clients, how to do email marketing. All of those things. Is there anything that you’ve seen that strikes you as, “I wish that I could do that.” Or, “This is what I’m aiming for.” Is there something that you want to emulate, or is it all kind of joined?

Vaughan: One of the sources which– they do some good chats about marketing, it’s the WP Builds Podcast. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that?

Tara: Yeah.

Vaughan: It’s ran by Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley in the UK. Their style and delivery and everything really sticks to my mindset, it’s kind of slightly cheekily irreverent but very informative. And they have some good guests on about marketing and their time. I would admit it’s probably the kind of British outlook and British sense of humor that appeals to me about their chats and interviews. And they bring that over into their discussions about all sorts of things. I mean, they have more technical discussions, they have marketing discussions, which I really enjoy. And I couldn’t name you any guests on there, I’m afraid, but there have been some good guests that have taught me a lot and helped me with my mindset and those kinds of things. What I don’t really like, and this is not to criticize any of them, but there are a lot of, as you were just saying, there’s a lot of courses about marketing yourself and they all come across as uber-confident. It just isn’t my way of doing things. What I like on the WP Builds Podcast is it really appeals to my outlook and sense of myself when they’re discussing things. And I think it’s possibly something that I don’t travel well in terms of listening to podcasts across the world about selling yourself and marketing yourself. I think it might be a peculiarly British mindset.

Tara: Yeah, that’s interesting. I haven’t thought about that before but that’s really interesting. I’ve listened to that podcast and follow David on a lot of different platforms where he exists, YouTube and otherwise, he’s got a lot of great things to teach us. What is your favorite thing to do? Your least favorite sounds like is marketing. What’s your favorite?

Vaughan: it would probably be marketing and admin. The admin, I’ve kind of got down to quite a good system now where I’m not dealing with lots of paperwork. I’ve got more clients on direct debit, so there’s more maintenance now. It more or less handles itself and I use quite a good accounts package that as long as I keep my invoices up to date, calculate my tax at the end of the tax year, more or less, I just need to press a button and my tax gets sent off at the end of the year. I’ve learned how to cut back my admin to very little. Yeah, I’d say it’s probably marketing the sort of thing I don’t like so much.

Tara: Yeah. What is your favorite? What’s the most favorite?

Vaughan: My favorite is probably all sorts of things actually. It’s getting into a project where I can really just involve myself in it probably too much and just really immerse myself in it and look at the details and get it completed. It’s getting myself immersed into projects, which is quite the common Asperger’s thing, you get obsessed by particular project. In some cases, that can be reading, in some cases, that can be doing craft. In some cases, that can be painting. For me, it’s kind of design and writing content, really. It’s just getting into something that really involves me and kind of obsesses me for a bit too long.

Tara: Yeah, I can relate to that. I always say, “I have a week or two weeks to build this.” But somehow once you get in it, you can’t stop, you just want to get to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. It is, it’s fun. I can relate to that. Yeah, sure.

Liam: Vaughan, I want to interject and circle around to another question if I can, in the interest of time here. One of our signature questions is about advice and the question is, what’s the best advice you ever received and implemented in your life? What’s the best advice that you ever received and implemented? And that can be personal advice, professional advice, maybe a mixture of both.

Vaughan: I think professional advice. Well, actually, it would be semi-professional, semi-personal as well. But a huge stage of my life, the best advice I’ve ever received is to do what you love, simply. When I was preparing to go to university, I was all sorts of setup to do– well, not actually university, a level before university, I was all sorts of setup to do subjects like English, and History, and Geography. Now, I did two of those subjects, but the one I really wanted to do was drama. Not because I wanted to be an actor, I’m too shy and too nervous to be an actor, but I was just obsessed by theatre and directing plays and stage managing stuff. That was one point where I just decided I’m going to do Drama, and then I went to the university and did Drama for three years. Haven’t done anything with Drama, mind you, and then I ended up working on the web. I don’t quite know how that happened. But I think the other thing is professionally, it’s just when I finished at the BBC and I did these other two jobs, it really didn’t engage me. And then I thought, “You know, this is what I want to do. I want to work freelance and have my own business and do things I love.” Which is all things web in terms of design and content.

Liam: Yeah, that’s great advice. I like that. Do what you love ties back then to your success. You’re happy when the project ends and you still like what you’ve done and you like the output and you have the clients happy, so that ties in very nicely together with that.

Vaughan: Definitely.

Liam: When you’re trying to do what you love and you’re finding yourself pulled this way and that. You’ve got a deadline and you want to do some design but you also want to generate the content, how do you navigate that? When you have creative inspiration that might want to take you this way but the deadline is close and you’re concerned that if you follow that creative impulse, you’re not going to meet your deadlines. How does that work for you?

Vaughan: I generally will try and be strict to myself and concentrate first on the bits that are going to take longer. Now, for me, that’s generally design because I’m not a trained designer. I taught myself design over the years, whereas the content bit– I’ve dabbled with English quite, but I taught myself how to write content and that can come to me fairly quickly and fairly naturally. The thing I do first is the more difficult bit which is the design bit, and I focus on that first. Then I kind of think– in the way, I would never tell clients this, I do the design and then I think about the content last, which is something I never say to clients because I always want to impress upon them, “You’ve got to think about the content. It’s no good having a beautiful design, if you don’t have the content.” But when it comes to my own method of working, yeah, I will definitely do that. I will think about the content last, I would get the design and then I would the content, not around it, but inside it. And then if need be, then adjust the design around the content. So it’s doing the complex bit first.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a good method, I think. I love your emphasis and your passion for content, Vaughan. I think that’s something that a lot of us struggle to get from our clients, so the fact that you’re really into it and help them with it is great. But we are actually out of time, this went by so quickly. I really enjoyed meeting you, you and I have interacted on Slack for a while so it was really great to actually sort of meet you in virtual person here, voice to voice. Thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find you online, Vaughan?

Vaughan: People can find me at Pilcrowandpixel.com and they can find me on Slack regularly. I think I’m just VaughanSimons on that, I’ve got different names on various channels but I’m on the GenesisWP channel, Business of WordPress channel, a few others, I forget off the top of my head. I’m on Twitter irregularly, I got rather bored of Twitter but I should do Twitter more. And I’ve got a Pilcrow And Pixel page on Facebook, too.

Tara: Wonderful. Thank you so much, really appreciate having you on Hallway Chats, Vaughan.

Vaughan: Really enjoyed it, thanks very much.

Liam: Vaughan, thanks for joining us, it’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you and I’m just going to remind our listeners that Vaughan is available for work and we will put his links in the show notes, and you can check him out and if it’s a good fit, you’re invited to send him some work and partner with him.

Tara: Yes. Alright, bye-bye.

Vaughan: Alright, thank you. Bye-bye.

Liam: Bye, Vaughan.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.