Thrilling, unmissable lessons from 10 months of freelance copywriting

Lesson one: you can get away with overpromising in the title if the rest of the article is pure dope. 10 months after going freelance, I finally get to breathe and take stock of what’s going on. Turns out starting up a business in the middle of a whopping great plague is scary as hell.

Thankfully, everyone’s been downright lovely and supportive to the point where it all somehow seems to be working. Thought I’d throw down some thoughts, not anything as crass as tips or advice cos there are folk doing the business side of things way better than me.

But if you’re thinking about taking your talents freelance and wondering what to expect, this might be slightly more interesting to you than another LinkedIn poll.

I can’t do the things that I can’t do

The decision to really strip things back and only do copy was a deliberate half-gamble. Back in February when things were starting out, I briefly considered branching out a bit. Dick about in Canva and pretend to be a designer, learn some scheduling software and fake being a social media manager, that sort of thing.

The realisation quickly struck that I’d be a bloody awful social media manager and an even worse designer. From what I’ve seen, the freelance market appears to reward specialists as long as you can confidently get your name out as ‘that guy who does that one thing good.’

By obsessing over providing one clear service, I can be way more versatile about the sectors I work in. This year has been wholesome af: renewable energy, healthcare, and electric vehicles mostly.

Time is up for debate, communication isn’t

I could whap out my laptop in the club and sort the invoices at 1am if I wanted to, it gives time and space a new sense of meaning. Feels like I’m working more than before yet still have more free time.

My tombstone is unlikely to read, ‘Rory was a disciplined and efficient man.’ But when you’re in complete control of your day, it’s hard not to make better use of your time. I haven’t had a meeting all year that I didn’t need to have.

Days are spent in these intense hits of ‘get project, deliver project’ and it’s really agreeing with me. However, it means I need to have my shit together when I do communicate. Being agencyside before, it’s not new to feel some distance from the end product so I know how to bridge that gap.

The brief used to be king, now it’s God Almighty.

Silence has been literally golden

32% of my work comes from LinkedIn and I basically never post on here. It’s made me question how much noise is really helpful, and how much is noise for noise’s sake.

I understand the case for posting every day but I can’t guarantee you a good daily post. Plenty of folk can, plenty more are just posting cringe to farm content. The impression left by your posts lasts way longer than the posts themselves.

A few jobs have popped up based on something I wrote months prior. Would those clients have retained their impression of me if I was forcing myself down their throats every 24 hours? Personally, when I see a post that’s clearly been made just for noise, it does not positively reinforce my opinion of the poster. Is that just me?

There’s now a hungry monster in my cellar

I’ve found basically zero barriers to setting up a business in the UK, but money still terrifies me. The anxiety around sending those early invoices, having the sheer temerity to ask to be paid for work, was insane.

Might be a class thing, maybe there’s just a general Britishness about not discussing money. Having to suddenly hold frank discussions about it was a real shock to the system. Your cash value in relation to the market is way more fluid, and there’s no one set day of the month when you ‘get paid.’ It’s like spinning plates which spontaneously get bigger and smaller as they spin.

How much of that money is mine and how much belongs to ‘the Business?’ Feels like ‘the Business’ is a completely separate entity to me. You ever watch Trap Door as a kid? I’ve got this trap door and beneath it lurks ‘the Business’ going ‘feed me!’

We get along famously well for the most part. And I checked the stats: 20% of businesses flop in their first year, statistically speaking I’m halfway to being Richard Branson. Right?

With luck, some of that might have been vaguely interesting to you. How’s your coffee? Honestly, writing this much about myself has been exhausting. I’d much rather write about you and your business.

Got a comms, marketing, PR, or web content project that needs exactly the right words? Kindly holla at ya boi, let’s get started.