St.Louis Business Journal
FREELANCING IS A CRITICAL SURVIVAL SKILL IN A TIME OF ECONOMIC DISLOCATION

By Anna Navarro
September 2011  

Examples in this column are fictionalized to protect privacy.



Freelancing can help you bridge the gap between jobs and even become a permanently satisfactory way to earn a living. But doing it successfully and happily requires planning and discipline.

Elaine was let go as the art director for a mid-size advertising company after 11 years. She quickly landed another position, but was again downsized in eight months. Since then she’d supported herself with a series of short term projects. But she wanted a “real” job.

She loved being an art director. She was well regarded in the industry and had many contacts. Her resume and job hunting strategies were excellent. But there just weren’t art director openings at her level.

I posed the obvious question: had she considered making her living as a freelancer? She had, but she didn’t want to do it. She said it was too unstable, too isolated, and lacked support systems (like IT, billing) and benefits.

We discussed the option of changing careers, but decided it would be nearly impossible for her to motivate herself to do the hard work involved when she liked being an art director so much.

So I proposed another alternative: That we work to solve the problems she’d encountered in the “casual” freelancing she’d done in the past. After much thought, she decided to go ahead with this, more because she lacked a better option than because she was excited about it. I requested she make a two-year commitment to give it a fair shot. Here is the list of issues we tackled and how we approached them:

Financial Instability. To achieve a sense of safety, we agreed she needed to engage in continuous marketing. I suggested she devote 20% of her time to generating business. We developed a marketing plan with weekly activities, and rehearsed how to make cold calls and pitches for work. She also created a dynamite portfolio and website to showcase her skills. The most difficult aspect of this was not slacking off on the time commitment when she had paying projects in hand.

Isolation. We identified a dozen people in the industry she felt close to, and I suggested she meet with each one at least once a month. Some were employed. Others were freelancers. Eventually, some of the freelancers started getting together as a group, collaborating and doing joint marketing for big projects.

Support services. She sought referrals and hired an IT consultant, a financial advisor (to set up a retirement plan and health insurance), and an accountant, (to set up financial systems).

Pricing. She gathered information on what other art directors charged for freelance work. We talked through how much she needed to live on and save for retirement and “rainy days”. Then we worked out an hourly rate that took into account that she’d be spending 20% of her time marketing, and 10% of her time on infrastructure tasks like financial recordkeeping, IT, etc., and also allowed her to fund her health insurance and retirement plans.

Negotiating. I suggested she always carefully clarify the parameters of a project before taking it on. That involved nailing down the scope of the project, the cost, the deadline, who she reported to, who she worked, with and the deliverables. She would then email a summary and ask for a confirming response before starting.

Creating a home office. She needed to be frugal, but she also needed a bright, inspiring workspace. She moved her office out of the basement and into the dining room, and invested in creating a very attractive visual screen that would allow her to “leave the office” at the end of her workday.

A year and a half after embarking on this more disciplined approach to freelancing, Elaine reports she likes what she’s doing much better than when she freelanced on a “catch as catch can” basis. The marketing and negotiation aspects are still her biggest challenges, but she’s finding them easier as she gets more practice.

On the plus side, she is meeting her financial goals, and really enjoys having control over her time and what projects she wants to work on. She’s developed several collegial relationships that are closer than any she’d had in the past. All in all, it’s working well enough that she’s going to continue doing it for the foreseeable future.

The difference between her “casual” freelancing experience and what she is doing now is having, and faithfully executing, a plan that resolves many of her earlier difficulties with this mode of working.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that works with clients on an individual basis to help them find more satisfaction and fulfillment in their work-lives. She can be reached by phone at (314) 367-0008 and her e-mail address is email@worktransitions.com. For more information visit the worktransitions.com website.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.