Freelancing Year 1: The Biggest Lessons I’ve Learnt

Has it really been a year already? Wow, time flies when you're doing something you love. 

About this time last year, I set up JVF Marketing, my marketing consultancy business. I’d left my job, taken a few months off to rest and travel, and now I was jumping into the unknown – the world of freelancing and self-employment.

I had some kind of idea of what I wanted to do, some ideas about how I was going to do it, but looking back over the last year, it’s crazy to think how much I’ve changed, how much I’ve learnt. They say the first year is the hardest. It hasn’t been easy for sure, but it also hasn’t been so hard that I stopped enjoying it.

For anyone thinking about going freelance or setting up their own small business for the first time, I thought it might be helpful to share some of my learnings over the last year.

Lesson 1: A promise of work is not a guarantee

This was a pretty hard lesson to learn, but one that I’m sure a lot of other freelancers will have had experience with. When I first told people I was going freelance, I had so many colleagues, friends, connections tell me that they’d love to work with me and to give them a call when I was set up. In my mind, that meant that I had a promise of work, that I had clients lined up and that I’d be totally fine and wouldn’t have to worry about finding my first clients at the start. Wrong!

This is no criticism of them, it’s just perhaps naivety and inexperience on my behalf. Someone telling you they want to work with you, doesn’t mean they actually will. It could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps they are just being kind, perhaps their own business circumstances changed and they no longer need you, perhaps they don’t have the right project or the right budget. Whatever the reason, all those promises of work turned out to be no work at all. This caused me a bit of panic, because I feared I wouldn’t have enough work coming in to pay those bills!

Lesson 2: Freelance job sites are not for me

When I first set myself up as a freelancer I did some research and found there were loads of websites where you could find and bid for work. The likes of People Per Hour, UpWork, guru, Fiverr etc. I signed up to pretty much all of them and applied for tonnes of jobs. I didn’t get a single one. It may work for some people, but I quickly decided I wouldn’t go down that route. In my particular line of business, the projects I came across expected freelancers to do a hell of a lot of work for very little pay. And the sites take a cut of that pay. I didn’t leave a well-paying job to earn ￡0.001 per word to write a 1,000 word thought leadership article!

If you’re finding success on those sites, that’s great for you. For me, they just don’t work.

Lesson 3: Free work is better than no work?

This is a tough one. When is it a good idea to work for free? Will the ‘exposure’ lead to new business? Will this free piece of work lead to more paid work? This is a common problem among freelancers. I did do some free work and I regretted some, but not all. Sometimes, the exposure was good for me. It placed me on a website with high authority, that would be read by my target audience. It provided links to my own site, improving my SEO. It gave me something to add to my portfolio. It added credibility to my name. In those instances, I would do it again. In fact, I have recently agreed to do a free talk in front of a group of professionals as they are my target audience and the exposure and networking opportunities will be beneficial for me. But on the other hand, I once found myself driving all the way from Manchester to Cheltenham to pitch for some work to someone I had already pitched to over the phone and via several emails. We had no contract in place and no budget agreed and ended up not working together as it just wasn’t the right fit. But in the meantime I’d given away lots of time and strategy advice. Oh dear what a waste of time and money! I also ‘gave away’ a lot of free advice to people thinking it wold turn into business, and they ended up just using my advice and finding someone cheaper. Oh dear, lesson learned!

I’m a lot stricter now when it comes to giving my time away. I take a considered approach. It doesn’t mean I charge for every minute of my time, but I certainly don’t give it away as easily.

Lesson 4: Everything takes longer than you expect

Finding a good client, agreeing on a scope of work, working out a budget, timings, deliverables, signing a contract, paying an invoice. There are a lot of steps needed before you actually get paid and begin working. At the start, I underestimated how much time this would take, and how much back and forth was involved. So, it’s important to have several projects on the go, or several warm leads so that you’ve always got a steady stream of income coming in.

Lesson 5: A steady stream of income makes a world of difference

When I started my business, I knew the minimum I needed to make to break even and my hope was to find a retainer client that would cover those costs – meaning everything else on top would be a profit. Retainer clients are great because it means steady work and steady income. But finding these clients, especially at the start, is not easy. I ended up finding this steady stream of income unexpectedly and it didn’t come from a retainer client. Instead, it ended up being a regular associate lecturer position at Manchester Metropolitan University. I hadn’t set out to become an associate lecturer, though I did want to make guest lecturing a regular part of my job. But through connections, a good CV and being at the right place at the right time, I found myself taking on four units throughout the year, giving me not just a steady income, but a really enjoyable role doing something relatively new to me.

Lesson 6: Lean on a community

Being a digital marketer, I turn to the internet and social media for most of my information. As a newbie freelancer with almost no freelancing friends to lean on for advice I turned to social media groups to find a support network. I joined several groups and found so much support, helpful advice and words of encouragement from a very engaged community of freelancers. I'd recommend these groups to anyone who is self-employed, even if you think you already 'know it all' because the support and encouragement alone is enough to keep you going. Particularly 'Freelance Lifestylers' run by Emma Cossey, 'The Northern Creative Collective' run by Claire Gamble and the 'TLC Business Club' run by Hannah Martin. It amazes me that complete strangers can be so kind, so supportive and encouraging, give their time away, share their skills with you and all while asking nothing in return.

Lesson 7: Keep an open mind

It’s great to have a plan. But don’t stick to it so rigidly that you miss unexpected opportunities. Keep an open mind and be ready to try something new and see where it goes. Particularly if you’re going through a slow patch where you might not have as much work coming in, why not do some lecturing, guest speaking, training etc? Why not join a networking group you wouldn’t normally join, attend an event you wouldn’t normally attend, volunteer as a mentor, sign up to a new course, write an article for exposure, and see where it takes you.

Year one has gone by in a flash, it’s been an exciting journey full of challenges and rewards. I became self employed because I wanted freedom and variety, to work with businesses that were passionate about what they do and I could share that passion, to grow, to explore new things and to challenge myself. A year later, I can say I’ve done all of that and more. Here’s to the next exciting year!

Are you a freelancer? What lessons did you learn your first year?