The Best Advice from 10 years of Interviews

Okay. Hi. Hi. So, Yes. So I run the loveliest community. But it actually started ten years ago with the Being Freelance podcast. I’m not a graphic designer, so forgive, I was going to make it do things, but it’s just there. There’s now over 300 episodes of the podcast and from them I have basically stolen lots of words of wisdom because ten years ago I didn’t know what I was doing running a business, nor with work life balance, so I started asking people.

So I’m going to share some of my favorite quotes from the past ten years of the podcast today. So first up, don’t freak out. This was Louisa who said this. Because when you freelancing, there’s so much opportunity to freak out, like, when you don’t have any work, when you have too much work, when you fill in your first tax return, when you realise you’re meant to pay some money a few months after you pay your first tax return, and then when you fill in your second tax return and, when you decide to do a talk in front of people and drive to Northampton, there’s so much opportunity to don’t freak out, just don’t freak out. I think it’s wise words to to sort of keeping your arsenal.

Next, be bold. This works on so many levels, I think, because we have to basically everything that happens in our business happens because we go and do it.

So we have to remind ourselves to be confident, to be bold, to approach clients that we want to work with, to say yes to standing up and giving a talk, or going on a podcast or doing a video or even just going to events or walking into a cowork space for the first time where you’ve not met anybody and you’re feeling, what if they don’t like me? Be bold.

Somebody else said, be brazen, which I quite liked as well, but I’d already written this one. Next. What do you have to lose? I think that also works quite nice in your head when you’re trying to be bold. Because really, most things just don’t matter, you can just try them. Just put yourself out there. Be it approaching a client or agreeing to appear on that podcast.

What’s the worst that can happen? Emelie Fagelstdet, said stop being so available. There’s so many things which are drawing on our attention all the time. Stop being so available to your clients. Stop being so available to our devices, which are always trying to get our attention. This one kind of stuck with me, particularly the idea of setting boundaries around, our client communications when we let them into our lives.

But also that that thing of, like, your email inbox. Just checking your email, for example, a couple of times a day or a few times a day instead of all the time. Respect yourself. I liked this one. This was Fraser Davidson, and Fraser wasn’t saying that you should be horrible. In fact, Fraser was lovely. But he did give the advice that nice guys get paid last.

And this is the principle that sometimes we have to, anybody have to chase for money sometimes. And that if a company has five freelancers to pay and one of those freelancers is really nice about it and is going, oh, it’s fine, no, its, next week, yeah. Oh, I missed the I missed the payment run, then that’s absolutely fine. No problem.

Next week’s fine. The nice guy is always going to get paid last, so is the person who is emailing them phoning them, chasing them, still in a nice way but being persistent. So stick up for yourself, basically. With that Jess said, know your finances and also understand them. Even if you hire an accountant, which I highly recommend, or you have a bookkeeper.

The idea of regularly checking in with your bank statement, saying hi to it, seeing what you’re actually spending your money on, but also where’s your money coming from? Which of your services are more profitable? Has that changed over time? It’s worth staying close to your finances. Hayley, Hayley Aken, who’s a motion designer, she felt like business freelancing was a game, so she liked to gamify it.

She used to enjoy, you know, how much more money can I actually ask for this project? How many rejections can I get? How many clients can I ask for? It feels like a game. And with that in mind, it’s time to play the wagon Wheel of Fortune. Oh, yes. Hang on a second. You got to do it properly.
If you’re going to do it, do it properly. My glamorous assistant.

All right, so the next quote we have to try, oh, that might bugger up your microphone, the next quote. We need to figure it out, you know, the way the Wheel of Fortune works. So I need a letter. Oh bloody hell. Does it start with an A, by any chance?

Okay. How did you get that on there?

It’s on there.

Well, I mean, it’s ruined now anyway.

It’s a, I Immediately managed to click. I built, Penni I built this whole PowerPoint. There’s people here now.
They’re not going to see it. Doesn’t matter have a Wagon Wheel. It doesn’t matter. Always be marketing. No, really, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine. Nobody tell the people in Cambridge what it was.

Always be marketing. Rebecca Rosenberg, said this on a really recent episode, but really, so many people have said this over the years that, I mean, one person said 25% of their time be it in a week or in a day, should be marketing. Always be marketing. Don’t wait until your clients have run out until you start trying to find work.

See it coming on the horizon and be putting yourself out there. Another marketing one was this, find something you enjoy doing or you won’t bother doing it. Because I don’t know, some people say, oh, you should start a newsletter or you should start a video, you should start a podcast or. But really, these things only work if we enjoy doing them.

Even speaking at an event like somebody, if you hate it then don’t keep trying to do it. I think it also works with our client work as well though. Pay attention to what it is that actually you enjoy doing what gives you energy and try and do more of that.

This was poetic. This is the feeling that you get when suddenly you’re ill and you can’t work. D is on the latest podcast, which you can hear it in a moment, and she said, prioritise health over everything else. Because we are our business, we’ve got to take care of ourselves. And on that same point, Ettie said she likes to think about it this way, if she has a long job description, if you think about all the things that you have to do in your job, make sure somewhere on there is to eat a nourishing meal, is to sleep, is to get some fresh air and go outside. So she likes to think that actually part of her job, if not the most important part of her job and of her day and of her week, is to look after herself.

So we’re all guilty of kind of like putting everybody else ahead of ourselves.

On the same vein, I loved this from Rachel Ramsey, schedule life first because Rachel, I mean Rachel does this really well. She literally gets her calendar and then puts in ‘learning to fly helicopters’. Like, you don’t have to do exactly what she does. And ‘volunteering with Guide Dogs for the blind’. So she gets to play with Labradors, or Golden, whatever they are, dogs. So schedule life first. Really though because everything that you do with your freelance business can fill up all the time that you have, because there’s always something else that you want to be working on. If you’re like me, you’ve always got ideas and things that you want to do as well as the client work. And if you’re capable of scheduling in a client meeting, then you should be able to schedule in your own thing as well.

A coffee break with a friend or coming to something like this.

Wise words from Frenchman Jonathan da Costa, that really is all about being nice to work with. If you’re good to work with, if you do what you say, if you’re pleasant to people, it’s amazing how far that can go. There are plenty of dickish people in the world, so don’t be one of them. Speaking of people though, just keep meeting people.

All of those guests I’ve spoken to and there’s now 340 episodes, so many of them, their work comes from word of mouth. Maybe you find this too. And so really, we just need to keep meeting more mouths and then telling those people what it is that we do. So put yourself in positions where you can keep meeting people, be it online or of course in person, and remind yourself constantly that you’re not doing as bad as you think you are.
We are our worst critics. We probably say so many nice things to the people sitting around us, to people that we know online, and then we beat ourselves up. We think, oh, I can’t possibly do that. This sucks. You’re not doing as bad as you think you are. And pace yourself. I mean, Eddie actually said a lot more than this, but it didn’t sit well.

No, I’ll do all of it.

I feel like this needs Lion King music, it’s quite… Be realistic and stay the course. And eventually it will turn into something that’s very comfortable and very convenient for your life. It’s just a matter of having that resolve to push through the hardest parts of this business, which is just the precariousness. This, and not knowing what’s coming next that takes a huge emotional and psychological toll. It’s figuring out how to cope with those things and just realising that there’s much, much better days ahead. And then it’s all worth it. Because freelancing is such a beautiful way to make a living, being your own boss, setting your own rules, your own schedule. It’s just that that doesn’t come immediately.

And a lot of people fall into this trap of thinking the way it feels right now, in year one or year two, is the way it’s always going to feel. But that’s just not true. Freelancing is such a beautiful way to make a living. But pace yourself and remember, don’t freak out. Thank you.