A messy #guide to your first month as #freelancer

So it's been 4 weeks. 4 weeks of non-full-time-job. 4 weeks of 'freedom' , of hot yoga 5/6 days a week, 4 weeks in which I managed a trip to Paris to see my sis and brand new niece, midweek, at an insanely low price.

4 weeks of setting up website, getting business cards, starting to talk to people and assess whether I was right to take the plunge. Was I? Who knows! It will probably take a couple of 6 months to find that out, but I can hereby tell you that four weeks were enough to find out a number of things.

And so without further ado, here it is, ANOTHER LIST for you to read, amongst the sea of 'things to know' and 'to-do lists' out there: a messy list of what to expect after you jump into the mysterious world of freelancers. (*this list is by no means intended to be exhaustive or correct, please refer to people who actually know things about freelancing if you want real advice.) 

1. YOU KNOW NOTHING. Everyone will know more about freelancing than you. Your inbox will fill up with people telling you everything you are doing is a "yes but" . From the colour of your website to your logo and the way you are positioning yourself in the market, you are doing it wrong.

EXHIBIT 1 - I thought my experience, together with a fun, alternative presentation of the person/professional I am (read: an animated Prezi where, amongst other things, I reveal that I collect hats and am left handed) would be OK. After all, people will now hire ME, for what I am, for what I can do. Right? WRONG. Turns out everyone needs a CV. Like, a proper one. A white A4 piece of paper containing a list of your roles and achievements in chronological order. Turns out LinkedIn "is not for that", and that recruiters CAN extrapolate a CV from your profile, but "It's not the same" (although if LinkedIn and CV don't match the recruiter will never call you again). Also, it doesn't matter whether you've worked 200 years or 1, your CV needs to be between 1 and 2 pages long, but still list ALL your relevant achievements. You also don't want breaks, who cares if you moved countries when your son was 1! 5months without working is a bad "hole". So, GET. A. CV. (no gaps allowed).  

EXHIBIT 2: turns out 18years in marketing and events are definitely not enough to define me as a professional. TONS of people DM'd me on every social platform to give me advice, one twitter follower I have never even met wrote an article/blog on me, explaining how I should go about finding clients. Because apparently I am placing and marketing myself all wrong, and I should never say I can help companies make things happen even with little budgets (which I can do awesomely, and is, in fact, one of my USP's). 

So remember:

2. TIME. Get Ready, because it's weird. SO weird. For the first 72 hours, your day seems incredibly long. You have an incredible amount of things to do, set up your website and social, start spreading the word, looking for clients. Now there's no 9to5, you can do it in your own time. But now all the time is YOURS! You are the owner of 24 hours a day. And they are SO many. So, for example: 

I wake up at 4:30 (no merit there - this is not one of those annoying lists of "things successful people do to be productive" - this is just how my body works), so I spend 2 hours preparing the emails of the day. For me, this is the most productive part of the day.  Then it's time to make croissants for 8yo (or whatever 'breakfast of the day' is), do school run (which takes 2 hours as son in in a SEN school not exactly round the corner) , sit half an hour outside Planet Yoga sending those emails I drafted earlier, do a 90mins hot yoga lesson, and after that I still have 3.5 working hours before the kiddo comes out of school. After the afternoon school run, there still seem to be another 2hours where I am free to chose whether to work or, say, play Lego Batman 3. So, in the days when I am consulting, I still manage to fit in 8hours of working time around yoga and school run. Isn't that A LOT of time? Amazing. And what's more, my concentration during those hours is awesome, I am much more productive than on a normal office day. 

Still, some days I seem to work more than necessary, and get my work/life balance quite wrong. My humble advice in time management? Plan, and train yourself. Give your tasks dates and times, set alarms to switch tasks/get "you" time etc, and stick to them like your life depended on it (because it kind of does). I am sure in time this will become a habit? (crosses fingers, already fed up by alarms)

3. FREEDOM. This is something I wasn't prepared for. I do miss the people in the office, and the safe, calming routine, but I am loving the ability to chose what I do every day. I can actually go to the shops when no one is there. I can sit in a café or at the park, laptop next to me, and work away under the sun, chatting with old ladies and their little dogs. I can plan trips to see my family around the cheapest ticket options, instead of being forced to arrive Friday in the middle of the night and leave on Sunday, after not even 48 hours with my loved ones.

My advice: no advice, just try it, this bit is awesome.

4. FITNESS LEVELS. As an employee, I used to spend lunchtimes in the gym, and managed to fit 1-2 hot yoga nights a week (on lucky weeks). Using my lunch hour to train also meant eating in front of the computer after I was back.  Now it's hot yoga at least every working day, sometimes morning and night, and my meals have my full attention. My body is thanking me for this. I feel (and look) much better than 4 weeks ago. My skin is clear, my hair is shiny. My mind is sharper. I can run after my son at the park and survive.  

My advice: Do it. Take that training time you could never fit in around your full time job. Remember no one is going to pay for you to be home sick/on holiday now, so your body has never been such an important temple to preserve! Plus, it's fun!

5. MONEY. Am I all set up knowing I will now earn as much as/more than my last salary? Heck no. Am I sure that money-wise this was the right solution, and that I'll always be able to pay the bills and have money to fill my pension plan? Eeehmm... Nope. I believe I will, and so far (HAHA! 30 days!) so good. But being sure? That's an entirely different thing. 

My advice: I have already talked to the old man singing in a plastic microphone outside H&M in town and asking passers-by for spare pennies, the job for back vocals is mine and we already have matching mike's, so don't even think about it. 

6.WORKLOAD. Am I managing to fit in consultancies day on/day off, leaving a free day here and there, but creating a steady flow of work? Nope. Am I finding work? Yes. Is this work always at Marketing Director level? Hahahaha no. But it's fresh stuff, new things, some I have never done before, others I have done millions of times. But never with this client! Some pay more, some less. Some will last, some won't. Am I happy with this? Yes! Because I see opportunities. Because I pick what I want to work on.

My advice: take the job. Especially at the beginning. Even if it's small. You never know what a little contract could lead to, if the clients like your work. Referrals? A bigger project? Who knows! Isn't this exciting?

CONCLUSIONS: well it was a messy list, so you won't get a tidy conclusion. I really wouldn't know what to say. 

Are you fed up with full-time job and ready for a new adventure? The thought of not having enough work for the first couple of months doesn't scare you because you know already, from your student days, that you can survive a month off the 10kg pack of rice from the discount supermarket round the corner? (you might not want to try this at home) . You are sure that, if you jumped, some of your current clients would follow you? You are not sure about anything, but want to give it a try? Do it! 

Don't want to leave the security of a job that pays for your bills and holidays, and secretly like to moan about the 9to5, and the fact holidays are not enough? a! Would you die without the daily chat around the kettle? Freelancing is deffo a no-no for you in this moment of your life. But it might be later on, so keep this list in your saved articles! 

Either way, should you have any tips on my new career, I am all ears, my social media channels are on my LinkedIn profile ;)