Overcome self-criticism and get lucky with Mel Barfield
How being lucky isn’t just luck with Mel Barfield on The Show (Off)
Luck isn’t mysterious. It can be cultivated
I had Mel Barfield on The Show (Off) and by the end of it we’d covered more about luck, self-talk and being visible than most business books I’ve read. Is that a good thing? Watch and find out! : )
Mel is managing partner and brand voice lead at the copywriting agency Copy Or Die, she hosts the Indie Business Club podcast for freelancers, founders and independent business owners, and writes a column for Freelancer magazine. We’ve known each other for a while. Long enough that we have a childish hand signal we do to each other across conference rooms, which I have since discovered she does with several other people. I’m not special. Fine.
Ill with a chest infection and refusing to reschedule, I sat down with her anyway. This is what came out of it!
“Who am I to start a podcast?” wasn’t a question Mel ever considered
A lot of people talk themselves out of starting something. Whether it’s a podcast, a newsletter, putting their face on video, because of that old fear: who am I to do this, who’s actually going to listen?
Mel never had that fear, and her reasoning is simple: if you can help one person, that’s enough. Someone a week behind you in their business journey will learn something from watching what you do, even, she says, if what they learn is “I am never doing it like that.” Either way, it’s useful to them.
Indie Business Club started as a chat between two mates who wanted to talk about the pleasures and pitfalls of working for yourself, and it grew because Mel simply kept doing the thing that came naturally – having a good yap with someone she liked.
Do what comes naturally (but know what that actually means)
Mel’s take on visibility isn’t “everyone must be on video” or “everyone must be loud on LinkedIn.” (Neither is mine FYI) It’s this: if you’re naturally opinionated and confident in writing, and then you put out a video where you’re quiet and stiff because you hate being on camera, that mismatch is what reads as inauthentic.
So the advice isn’t “force yourself onto camera” or “never do video.” It’s find the version of visibility that matches your actual personality, and lean into that instead of copying whatever the LinkedIn gurus insist is the one true format.
For Mel and me, unsurprisingly, that’s talking. With added tangents. (We went on one about ageing and why it’s a shame that people seem to be forgetting what a fifty-year-old face actually looks like. Then we gurned.)
“I decided to love myself”
I asked Mel whether she was nurtured and celebrated for being ‘herself’ as a child, half expecting a neat origin story for her confidence. Her answer: no. She just decided, at some point, to love herself and be confident.
She’s the first to say that’s not massively actionable advice. You can’t just tell someone to decide to have self-belief et voilà! But she also makes a case for something more concrete underneath it: catching your negative self-talk and rectifying it whenever possible. Not letting “I hate my thighs” or “I hate my nose” become the default script, especially once you’ve got kids watching how you talk about yourself. It’s basically pop-psychology CBT, as she puts it. Noticing the thought, correcting it, on repeat, until it’s just how your brain runs.
The unexpectedly useful thing about watching other people be mediocre
Mel said something I found strangely liberating: part of what gave her the confidence to go freelance as a copywriter was looking at other copywriters’ published work, people who’d been doing it for years, and thinking, honestly, I could do this at least as well as they do.
She was quick to caveat it. You don’t know what a piece of writing went through before it got published, how many rounds of internal amends butchered someone’s line. But the underlying point stands: watching people who are further along than you, doing the thing at a level you know you can match or beat, can be genuinely motivating rather than discouraging.
On the flip side of that, she acknowledged that someone might be looking at her and thinking the same thing! ‘I can do that!’ And that’s ok too.
Luck isn’t magic
I loved this part of the conversation. Mel used to be a careers advisor, and along the way came across happenstance theory; the idea that careers aren’t the neat, linear ladder we were promised, and the sooner you accept that, the more able you are to look sideways, take an unexpected step, and potentially end up more fulfilled.
From there she got into Richard Wiseman’s research on luck and his psychological experiments, including one where he planted five-pound notes on the pavement. People who identified as lucky noticed it and picked it up. People who identified as unlucky walked straight past. Same opportunity, different outcome, entirely down to whether they were open to the ‘luck’ that was sitting right there.
Lucky people, according to Wiseman’s research, tend to have wider networks, follow their gut instinct rather than dismissing it, go into situations expecting a good outcome, and learn from things going wrong instead of just filing it under “I’m unlucky.”
The ethos behind it is getting close to the Serenity Prayer. Take action on the stuff you can control, and try to let go the stuff you can’t.
Which loops back neatly to visibility. Mel pointed to Daniel Priestly’s Key Person of Influence and the advice to put yourself in rooms with people already doing what you want to be doing. It’s how she ended up working alongside Dave Harland, one of the most respected copywriters in the UK, and building the kind of accountable, honest creative relationship that makes your own work better simply because someone you trust is allowed to tell you it’s not quite there yet.
What I took from this one
Not everyone has a dramatic origin story for their confidence. Sometimes it builds with very small decisions taken over and over again and ‘noticing what winks at you’ as Mel puts it.
Catch the full conversation with Mel Barfield on The Show (Off) here.
Connect with Mel:
And while you’re at it, why not connect with me on LinkedIn here.
And find out more about my offer positioning and messaging services here.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Meet Mel Barfield
01:15 Conference Friends and Banter
02:35 Podcasting Without Perfection
03:59 Indie Business Club Origins
06:02 Why Start a Podcast
10:11 Visibility Your Way
12:53 Ageing and Being Seen
16:39 Confidence and Self Talk
18:39 Body Positive Parenting
19:20 Getting Comfortable On Camera
20:02 Rewriting Self Talk
22:16 Finding Your Thing
24:46 Confidence Through Visibility
29:26 Collaboration And Accountability
31:09 How To Court Luck
35:19 Happenstance Career Theory
37:10 Training A Lucky Mindset
40:34 Wrap Up And Where To Connect