Welcome to 15 Minute Freelancer, your snack size guide to being your own boss and building a business and life. Hello, I'm your host Louise Shanahan. My LinkedIn bio says I'm a freelance health copywriter. But for the next 15 minutes I'll be tickling your ears with practical strategies, behind the scenes stories, and nuggets of wisdom so you can create freelance business that works for you. Whether you're just starting out or you've been self-employed for a while, I'll be right here with you to help you navigate the ups and downs of freelancing life. So grab a coffee, relax and join me for 15 minutes of freelancing fun. Don't forget to hit subscribe.
Well, hello, everyone, you are listening to episode two of 15 Minute Freelancer, a podcast for freelancers that claims to give you everything you need to run a sustainable freelance business in 15 minutes or less each week. But as you may have noticed, I failed at the first hurdle in episode one and I gave you five bonus minutes. It was 20 minutes long. I'm sorry about that. I will try and stick to 15 minutes today. That is my goal. I am your host, Louise Shanahan, and I need to practice my timekeeping. Anyway, thank you for being here, really appreciate it. I'm excited to get going on the second episode.
In the first episode, I got straight down to business with some simple ways to find clients. These are the number one thing that every business needs. If you missed that, please do give it a listen. Let me know what you think. You can find me on social media. I really am keen to know if that was helpful for you and if you'd like more topics along those lines.
Today, I want to get a little bit more reflective and talk about some of the big lessons that I've learned over the last few years of freelancing. At this time of year, everyone's looking ahead and planning. If you are maybe wondering if this is the year that you’ll make the jump to freelancing, or if you're wanting to switch things up in your business, I hope that some of these things might give you a little bit food for thought or a bit of reassurance. And remember, if you have any questions at all about getting started as a freelancer, please do reach out, I am really keen to help people if I can, and I'd love to help you find a way forward.
Let's kick off with a bit of a bit of backstory first. Before I started freelancing, I worked in a ‘proper job’ for 10 years. Some of you might know a bit of my background: just as I graduated from uni, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and it put my post-graduation plans on hold while I had treatment and figured out what I wanted to do. The treatment and recovery, thankfully, were pretty fast and effective. But it did send me on a different path. It was different to what I was hoping that I would do when I finished uni. Originally, I was thinking that I was going to move to Amsterdam and have some amazing, exciting international career. But I ended up staying where I was in Edinburgh, and temping in the civil service. Eventually, I became a permanent government employee. I didn't quite make the escape I dreamed of, or at least not for another almost 10 years. But over that time, I worked in all sorts of different policy is from health, justice and elections.
There were lots of upsides. Even though that hadn't been my plan, it was quite exciting. A lot of the time, it was very busy, I worked on high profile projects, and I made some really great lifelong friends there. And, obviously, working in government, there is the steady income and the pension and the holiday pay. But it wasn't the best fit for me. There were lots of rules – written and unwritten rules – lots of sticking to the ‘way things are done’, and clocking in and out. And the commute! I would sit on a damp bus for an hour there and an hour back each day. And endless meetings, even to the point of having planning meetings for planning meetings. It was ridiculous. There were so many meetings. And as so often is the way with large organisations, you're often working towards what management needs rather than what might be the best course of action for the people who are actually using the project or the programme or whatever it was that we were working on.
I remember sitting in a meeting of Chief Executives one day (hope none of them are listening!), and I was thinking, “this could be me in 20 years,” and I did not want that. That was quite a shocking revelation at the time because that was what I was working towards as I was kind of moving through my career. I don't want to sound disrespectful to anyone in that career. It's extremely important and valuable work. And as I say, there were lots of positives so I can see why people choose it. But it just never felt like a good fit for me. I'm trying to think back to what really triggered the change. There was that meeting obviously. I think maybe it was also listening to the Four Hour Work Week, the book by Tim Ferriss. I know it's kind of a click-baity title and it's been ripped apart on the internet. But I did get so much out of reading or listening to that. I went down the rabbit hole of online business and self-employment, and the idea that you could actually choose what you want to do with your life, within certain parameters, of course. I started to think I could do something different. I don't have to be in these planning meetings for planning meetings for another 20 years. But the only problem was, I didn't know what to do. I didn't have any experience of self-employment. My parents weren't business owners. I didn't know any entrepreneurs. So I didn't really know what was involved.
There were so many unknowns. I had a lot of fear around quitting a sensible, well-paid job. I didn't know where people could find clients, or did I need to get an accountant? Should I get business cards? I just didn't really know where to start. Four or five years later, it's kind of funny to look back on how uncertain I felt then – it really feels like a complete 180 to where I am now. And it's been such an adventure. So today, I wanted to share a few things that I wish I could go back and tell myself then. Maybe some of these will resonate with you. You can let me know.
So the first thing is: you're not alone. You're not alone. Yes, as a sole trader, if that's how you start out, you kind of are alone. You're the business, you're the one doing all or most of the work and you're making all the decisions. And as a freelancer, working alone can be really lonely at times, whether it's because you're literally working alone in your office, or just because you're the one that's solely responsible for your success and all the decisions.
But you're actually not alone. The freelancing community is amazing. It's so amazing to have this ready-made community of people who know how you feel and who've been there already, or are maybe going through the same issues with you. They’re there to give you a bit of support, a pat on the back when things have gone well, or just to act as a sounding board. If you've got questions that you're trying to figure out, everyone – or at least this is how I find it – everyone is so generous with their time and advice. And to be honest, this kind of surprised me.
I think when I started out, I would imagine that as a copywriter, other copywriters would be my competition. But that's really not the case. Other freelancers in your industry are not the competition. There's enough work for everybody may not feel like that sometimes. But there really is. Everyone offers something slightly different. So when we see each other as a community, rather than competition, the results are better for us all. A rising tide lifts all ships. And I was lucky to discover this really early on.
People would be so generous in offering advice, information, templates for proposals and contracts, ways to respond to clients if they ask particular questions. Even sharing leads for new projects, maybe you've seen that yourself and the different slack groups and things people are busy, they will pass them on. And I just think that's amazing. But more than that, and I think this is probably something that we're maybe feeling right now, as I'm recording this in lockdown, we really do feel alone a lot of the time. It's the ability to connect with people and feel like you're part of something. I feel like the folk in my Twitter chats and Slack groups are like colleagues in a sense.
In the UK, there are a few big groups or movements and we're really lucky to have them. There's Being Freelance and Freelance Heroes. They have Facebook groups, a presence on Twitter, they've got podcasts, you can access all of that and tap into this whole network of people who are so keen to help you. It's just amazing. There's such a strong sense of community there. And there are loads that are specific to different industries as well. So whether you're a copywriter or a designer, or I don't know a cat sitter or gardener, whatever kind of freelancer you are, there will be a community somewhere for you to find like-minded people. You're never alone. There's always someone to talk to. So that's my first thing I would go back and tell myself.
The second thing is something that I feel really strongly about. It's totally possible to build a sustainable freelance business without working endless hours and getting stressed out. There's this perception I hear a lot, that freelancing is a constant struggle bus. That you're living hand to mouth, that you're desperate for every last scrap of work. I don't want to minimise the challenges that many freelancers face. But I also want to advocate for the idea that it can be a really enjoyable, sustainable, successful career. It doesn't have to be hard all the time. And I know, I'm sure I'm gonna get ripped apart for saying this, I have to put in the caveats. I don't have kids. So I'm not having to homeschool, I'm not having to juggle anyone else's timetable. I'm really just responsible for myself. So I know that's a huge factor that will be affecting how hard freelancing feels for a lot of people. And likewise, I have the capacity to work, I see plenty of other examples of people who look like me. And I've got all sorts of advantages that I'm fully aware of. I've had experience in management, too, so I'm pretty confident when it comes to the negotiation. I don't want it to sound like I take these things for granted.
But I do see a lot of people working really long hours and stressing over difficult clients. And I did this too, when I started out. I was constantly finding myself in a panic because I was either far too busy, or had an empty diary and I thought I'd never find another client and this was going to be a disaster. So that was really stressful. Or I'd be stressing over how to fit in multiple projects at once. Honestly, I found this so hard when I was starting out. If I was talking to multiple leads, I'd worry about how I would schedule them in if they all said yes, because I'd told them all that I could start the next week. If they all say yes, that's going to be a nightmare. Or if only one of them said yes and the others said no, then I'd be able to start sooner, but I'd given them the wrong date. I just got in such a pickle over this. The same with making sure I had the right information in contracts. I still often find myself wanting to rate and rewrite a new marketing strategy just about every week, because I feel like I should be doing all the things. But I have to remind myself, and maybe you do, too, that we don't have to do all the things. So I don't want anyone to feel bad if they are in a stressful situation. Freelancing is hard a lot of the time. And that is not my goal to make anyone feel any worse about that. All I want to say is that I've learned that a lot of these stresses can be fixed with good systems.
So, if you are struggling to find clients to pay the rates that you want, then you need to do some work to figure out a market for your service that has the budget to pay. You need to have a system in place to market yourself to that audience. And then you need to have the systems in place to allow you to manage those projects and keep all those different tasks running smoothly, in a way that works for you and your life and the different demands on your time. It's totally possible to build a business that works for you. If you have those systems. If you manage your time. If you set the boundaries rely on the community that I mentioned before. There's a huge mindset piece there as well. And you can’t get distracted by what everyone else is doing. So that is not easy. But I guess what I'm trying to say is it doesn't have to be as hard as we all make it sometimes. If I could go back to myself five years ago, that would be definitely something to bear in mind. You don't need to overcomplicate it, and it doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it.
The final thing that I want to go back and tell myself is that you get to decide. You can do this, you need to trust yourself, this is your business. The whole point in this is that you get to decide. If you want those six figure goals or whatever, that's fine, you need to come up with a plan to go for it. If you don't want them, that's also fine. It doesn't matter what everyone else is saying that they want. If you prefer to focus on more time, or having more flexibility in the way that you work or being able to choose the specific projects that you work on, you get to decide. If you want to add a new service. If you want to stop a service, if you want to make a course, if you want to launch a podcast, you get to decide. And that applies to the small decisions, too. One thing that I always like to say to myself is what would it look like if it were easy? What would it look like if it were easy? You get to decide.
So those are three big lessons that I've learned in the last few years of freelancing and I would really love to know if these resonate with you. So please come find me on Twitter and let me know what you think. Thank you.
You've been listening to 15 Minute Freelancer with me, Louise Shanahan, freelance health copywriter and content marketer at thecopy prescription.com. If you enjoyed this, please hit subscribe, leave a review or share it with a freelance friend. And if you've got a freelancing question you want answered on the podcast find me and say hi on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Thanks, and until next time, happy freelancing!