Keep Calm, and Carry On Freelancing

Freelancing is living the dream - right? The biggest risk factor, to judge by most stock photography, is getting sand in your keyboard, or suffering a coconut-related concussion. Self-employed and lovin' it, is the lifestyle we all aspire to.

But sometimes things go wrong when you're freelancing, and that's when you can feel more exposed or vulnerable, than someone working in a large organisation:

• Things happen in your personal life, or to those close to you. (To take an example from the last 24 hours, a friend of mine just suffered a total hard drive failure on the laptop that is her primary business tool. Yes, it's all backed up online - but she can't really edit technical papers on her smartphone...)
• Things happen to clients, who go from being your best friend and most reliable source of income to a fond memory overnight (sometimes for reasons beyond either of you to control or predict.)
• Things happen in the wider world - all too often, of late, so many people's work has been impacted by global factors from pandemics to war to climate-related incidents, to inflation and cost of living.

So this week's podcast episode is about surviving these kind of events, and ideally, positioning your freelance business and mindset to be resilient to them in the first place.

No, I don't tell you to make sure you have 6 months living expenses salted away under the bed, or whatever else financial advisers might suggest - because that kind of advice is either obvious, or so far out of reach as to be meaningless.

But I do explore how to build social capital in your business relationships so that you have something to fall back on when your circumstances change abruptly, or indeed those of your client and collaborators (because they're human too, and dealing with their own real life stuff).

I discuss how to think about your portfolio of activities and client roster, not just from a growth point of view, but also from a resilience perspective - the right amount of diversification without dilution, to ensure you can't get burned too badly. Your back-up plans B through Z (ideally), to make sure that whatever changes happen, you can keep on working and earning somehow.

And we also celebrate some of the huge upsides that freelancing brings, in a time of global uncertainty and upheaval. The sheer flexibility of our work and lives, is a superpower - as is our familiarity with change and prospecting.

Yes, it absolutely sucks to lose a great client, for any reason - but compare that to being laid off from a job, i.e. being dropped by a client who represents 100% of your income! Now imagine you'd been in that job for a decade, and had no up-to-date LinkedIn profile, portfolio, testimonials, or even basic hustling skills...

The continual flux of freelancing income is exactly what creates its intrinsic resilience, and means we can pivot on a dime when the world does the same. Change clients, activities, even countries if we want to, and this is the kind of flexibility which leaves us as ready as we possibly can be, to weather any coming storm.

So here's to freelancing, to flexibility, and to hustle - just keep your head down and power on through it (while keeping one eye on the horizon for the coming storms you CAN predict.)