What
Create a group of people around you, who provide a support network for your business. This includes fellow freelancers, advisors and mentors, specialists and collaborators, as well as friends, family and colleagues.
Why
Working for yourself can be isolating, but it doesn’t have to be.
Building a support community of people who understand the experience of working for yourself, who can provide useful insights and advice at certain stages of your journey, who can bring their own specialist skills to support you and your business, or just a friendly ear to listen to what you’re going through - is essential.
Having a support community helps you to find answers to questions, but also discover things you might not realise you needed to know about. A support community also plays a mental health role - in providing those microinteractions day to day, and having people to share challenges and successes with.
Working for yourself doesn’t have to mean working by yourself.
How
Consider the various different roles your support community might need to play, and create a list of the possible types of people you might want to include in your support community.
Think about roles including moral support, answering questions, finding work, getting professional advice, being mentored, getting feedback and input on your work, or simply having people to sit and chat with.
Start by joining freelancing-first communities, to find fellow freelancers.
Consider building yourself an “advisory board” of peers and those who understand self-employment and the sector you’re working in, or finding a couple of informal freelancing mentors - those who are further along the journey than you.
Don’t forget your support community can include professional supporters, such as your accountant or a lawyer; and collaborating supporters, such as a fellow freelancer you might work on a project with, or even ex-colleagues and potential and previous customers.
Consider including people who are outside your normal circles - diverse perspectives and experiences will add huge value to your support community.
Make sure you continue to invest in maintaining and nurturing your support network - as well as giving back, so that you can support others who are also looking for help and insight. This task is an ongoing one, which you’ll never truly complete.
Feeling overwhelmed by making connections
I recognise that not everyone finds networking and building relationships and connections effortless - whether it’s introversion, neurodiversity, social anxiety or something which makes it harder to be actively making and maintaing new connections.
But building a support community is an essential layer of protection and sustainability for your business - and helps to take care of the most important asset in your business: you.
Not every community will be right for you. Not every networking opportunity is going to be suitable. Not every collaborator will be the right individual. And you’re not expected to have a community in place overnight.
Take your time to slowly and gently find people who you feel a shared connection with. Commit a small portion of your week, every week, towards investing in building your community. Lean on your existing network to make introductions to mutual connections.
And most importantly, be yourself - don’t feel like you need to pretend to be something you are not. Your support network will change and evolve over time. It’s okay to move on from relationships and communities which are no longer aligned with who you are and what you need.
