The Shift: Issue #3
Interview: Matt Dowling, Freelancer Club. "Try living a day without art, music, video, photography or design and see how you feel."
"Try living a day without art, music, video, photography or design and see how you feel."
Matt Dowling, Founder of the Freelancer Club, on his creative journey, growing a business that supports freelancers, and how companies can adapt to new ways of working.
What inspired you to set up the Freelancer Club in 2014?
Way back, I was a freelance photographer prior to setting up the Freelancer Club. I had an unpleasant experience with a client who kept me on the hook without pay for six months, asking me to shoot their collection week in, week out, whilst plying me with excuses why my invoices hadn't been paid that month. I had dropped my other clients and had to borrow money from friends to pay the rent. After six months of chasing, I paid a visit to their head office and discovered they had gone bankrupt. They were using me to produce content to sell the last of their stock. That incident cost me £11,000.
The story made the papers and several freelancers reached out to tell me they had exp…
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