Leapers: 2020 in review

January - we started the year with excitement about our plans for 2020, with a content plan spanning money, ways of working, support networks and learning, and starting to nudge businesses who hired freelancers to work well with us. It was also the month when we welcomed Harry and Meghan to the world of self-employment. 

February - we published our second little guide - on the topic of Imposter Syndrome, a common concern for freelancers, which affects not only finding work but also our income and dealing with disputes. We also published our suggestions for tackling anxiety around IR35, which was due to arrive in April.

March - This little thing called COVID-19 was appearing in the news, so we published our guide to things to consider should matters get worse, like proactively working with clients to prepare for working remotely, changing contract terms, and setting up buddy networks in case you fall ill, and suggestions for how to work well from home. Little did we know what was going to happen, but about 20,000 people arrived on our doorstep looking for support.

April - we moved into Calm Mode, as the rest of the internet was telling everyone what and how they should be dealing with the pandemic, we suggested less should and more do what you can. I appeared on the TV talking about the impact of the pandemic on the self-employed, our work appeared in major news outlets and our working from home guides were shared widely, as we continued to create guides tackling the new challenges we were predicting.

May - the year was starting to get tiring, I know I was exhausted after months of feeling what everyone in the community was feeling - but there didn’t seem to be much of an end in sight. Work felt like it was reappearing for some, but it was hard - motivation and focus was lacking, so we focused on how to deal with lethargy and overwhelm, plus the new ways of working we’d all discovered.

June/July/August - after months of homeschooling, now six weeks of summer holidays too. I was loving spending more time with family, but juggling work, parenting, the community - it was a great deal, and I hadn’t taken a break since February. It was taking its toll. The rest of the world felt like it was returning a little bit to normal, and conversation turned to ‘return to work’, or rather ‘offices’.

September - a second lockdown loomed, but it felt different this time - we were all tired and exhausted, so we turned to look at managing energy, and tried to highlight that redesigning the way we work is entirely possible to fit around our needs, not just the expectations of when we are available. I’d found myself an almost full-time contract, and balancing community work and paid work was proving even more challenging.

October - seven months of varying states of lockdown, and with a winter ahead of us, we shared content on planning for the shorter days, and tried to nudge people back into addressing lapsed positive habits. We were also attending lots of virtual events speaking with various communities and groups on the habits which can help to improve how you work remotely. Personally - I fell in to a pretty dark place, and was really not coping with the long year and demands I put upon myself. We also piloted a new platform for agencies to offer support to their freelancers called ‘Work Well With’, and celebrated our third birthday as a project.

November - the end of the year was rapidly approaching despite most of us feeling like our energy levels were already depleted. We published our revised Winter Edition of working well during COVID, and looked at ways to celebrate Leaperversaries - or the day you went self-employed. 

December - the Leapers advent calendar returned, with a daily exercise and technique for each day of the month, and we shared suggestions on how to take a break over the holidays, something many find hard to do. We also campaigned for businesses to pay their freelancers ahead of the break, so invoices were not overdue for Christmas. And to wrap the year up, I was honoured to be recognised in the YunoJuno Freelancer Awards for work we did this year at Leapers.

It wasn’t the plan I’d started out with, we didn’t achieve what I was aiming to do, but after 12 months of an unexpected year, we’ve supported over 35,000 people in 2020, welcomed hundreds of new members to our family, published guides which have been read by thousands of people globally, and at the very least I know that we’ve continued to provide a space where people feel they can share openly and be supported.

Looking ahead

Last year, I wrote a set of objectives for 2020. 

I haven’t done it this year - I’ve started it a few times, but honestly, haven’t had the energy or focus. I’m exhausted. I was hoping the two weeks not working would give me some time and energy to regroup and think about what we could do with Leapers - but it hasn’t. The schools in London are closed, so we’ll be going back into homeschooling, I’m fortunate that I have a contract currently - but it’s very intense and consuming, so balancing what it necessary to pay the bills versus run the community, sometimes money takes precedent.

So I’m planning on keeping it simple:

1. Foundational content - I’m going back to basics and starting to write small pieces of content on each of the foundational topics and themes which support our mental health when self-employed. Once it’s written, it’s generally true forever, so doesn’t need creating again and again, and is beneficial for all.

2. Signposting with partners - I want to focus on building awareness of our content, so more people can discover and get support where they need it - over 60% of people who want help don’t know where to look, so working with partners to help signpost is a priority for me, but getting the word out there, so anyone who is self-employed knows where they can find help.

3. Building networks - the single biggest way to help people is to connect people, and whilst it is amazing that we have 5000+ registered members, it’s always the smaller groups of people who help each other out that are the most effective, so I’m looking at how we do this better, formally and informally.

4. Accepting help - I’ve run Leapers the last three years on my own - and whilst the community are amazing at supporting each other, I’m not great at accepting support myself, so I want to look at ways at which active members of the community can take more of a role in pushing the work we do forwards, and it doesn’t all fall to me.

5. Making it sustainable - Leapers is a loss-making activity. It costs a significant amount of money and time to run and maintain. My ambition would be to do this full-time as my job, but that feels like a 3-year journey to make that a reality. So initially, I want to try and find a small handful of ways of generating a little revenue this year, to at least cover our costs. 

The other two aspects of sustainability are protecting time and maintaining quality - and it’s the four other points that add up to enable this. Whilst it’s the last point - it’s also the most critical, as keeping the project active and helpful is the single most important goal.

Thank YOU.

My final word of the year needs to go out to everyone in the community - you.

Especially the active community members - those individuals who turn up most days, say hello, share how they’re doing, answer questions from others, be a positive force even when they’re having a bad day.

I’ve both heard and seen people going out of their way to help each other - whether it be just listening, offering useful advice, offers of meeting up or a conversation offline.

Even those of you who aren’t especially active on the community - just asking questions or sharing how you’re feeling helps everyone recognise that there’s benefit in being part of a group, and that saying you’re not doing great isn’t a weakness, and sharing when you’re doing well is to be applauded too.

It has, without doubt, gotten me through an incredibly hard year, and I can honestly say that Leapers is perhaps the only thing I’ve ever done in my career which feels like my purpose, and provides me with such great support and satisfaction. 

Here's to 2021.