I didn’t ever think that freelancing would be for me.
I always thought that I couldn’t handle the unpredictability and working without an established team around me.
I had been in PAYE roles for all of my career until the start of the pandemic. The day before the government announced the furlough scheme, I was made redundant from my Head of Marketing role at a charity.
When I got off the phone call, I immediately messaged some contacts on LinkedIn.
Freelancing was definitely not an active choice. It started by chance and continued by chance.
I ended up being approached by a few former colleagues for support with some projects in the absence of their furloughed colleagues and so I became freelance.
I maintained a roster of 3 clients for a few months before I was headhunted for a long-term contract position (2 years) and so I moved back to PAYE.
I was feeling relieved at that point as the work with my clients was starting to wrap up and I wasn’t sure where my next payment was going to come from.
Life events, changing the course of a career
My husband and I wanted to have a child, and it felt untenable to do that with only the maternity allowance and lack of shared parental leave available to self-employed parents.
I went on to have my son and moved to another PAYE role within a tech start-up. In 2023 I was once again made redundant after 7 months in the role. This also turned out to be four weeks before we were due to complete on a house purchase and sale of our flat, and (as it turned out) two months before I had to have open heart surgery.
Under these circumstances, maintaining a small number of light touch freelance contracts was the only work that I was physically and mentally able to do.
As I got stronger, I was able to take on more and more work until I was working a 4 day week again and I had work lined up for the next few months. I was still seeing it as a temporary situation though and being quite dismissive of what I had achieved for my clients.
Only about 4 months ago did I decide that I was going to stop active job hunting for permanent roles and embrace my new freelance era.
Freelancing was definitely not an active choice. It started by chance and continued by chance.
I was seeing freelancing as a temporary situation, and being quite dismissive of what I had achieved for my clients.
I kept having new clients approach me or finding invitations to tender that sounded interesting and so I kept going. Throughout the first 12 months of my second time freelance, I was also applying for a lot of different permanent/long term roles but not getting anywhere.
On top of that, I was recovering from surgery and wanting to maintain my 4-day week work pattern to care for my son, without making myself seem unappealing to hiring managers.
I was still applying for jobs unsuccessfully, and the constant re-writing CVs, covering letters, application forms was really taking its toll on me. My confidence, motivation, and mental health were low, despite being able to keep myself going financial from the projects I was getting.
I couldn’t see my success in that and measured myself through my ability (and perceived lack thereof) to get a permanent role.
My mental health was being really badly affected by not feeling connected to a role as I’d always taken such pride in my work. I felt in a constant state of flux and uncertainty which was starting to hold up my enjoyment of my life and career.
Something needed to change.
Shifting mindsets into fully-freelancing
I turned off all the job alerts I’d set up. I announced on LinkedIn that I had been working freelance for a year or so and started sharing what I was working on. I refined my core service offering and found a way to sum up what I do in a succinct and confident way. I threw myself into networking events to help me tighten up my spiel, even though networking is my absolute hell. I decided that I owed it to myself to really give this a good shot.
I re-found my confidence and am now starting to enjoy myself with my work again.
The uncertainty of where is the next contract or project is coming from is always there, but I was made redundant from “permanent” roles twice.
There isn’t really such thing as a job without uncertainty anymore, so I might as well be in a position where I can have some say in the direction that my work life is taking.
I am committed to seeing how far I can go working for myself and enjoying the challenge.
I’ve made an active choice to start taking more pride in my freelance work and to see if I could give it a real shot.
The job market is still pretty appalling, and I am now enjoying the flexibility and variety that my freelance career is affording me and finding that it really works with my neurospicy brain. I’m getting more inbound requests for my services now, so the chance to grow is there for the taking.
I’ve also found that it’s been easier to gain experience in the areas that I really wanted to develop in when I’m not being held into a strict role description and so I’m ultimately a more experienced professional because of it. If there was a too-good-to-pass-up permanent opportunity with the right conditions and flexibility, I’d definitely go for it and enjoy those holiday days and sick pay without guilt or concern.
But for now I am committed to seeing how far I can go working for myself and enjoying the challenge.
Freelance work is a proper job where you can achieve your career objectives, even if it looks a bit different to what you might have imagined.
When you feel like you have taken freelance work because of a situation out of your control it’s really easy to feel like it’s temporary and a stop gap which limits your ability to grow.
You might decline opportunities because of the secret hope that a permanent role is just about to drop onto your lap next month.
My business has improved so much, and I’ve found so many amazing networks and contacts since I decided to give my freelance work the credit it deserves in my portfolio career and say yes to longer term projects.
