Welcome to the 100 Days of Freelance
Designing Your Email
Welcome to the 100 Days of Freelance.
Congratulations!
You’ve made a decision to scoop out the brains of not just one freelancer, but the collected wisdom of over 300 freelancers in the last 4 years.
One thing we lack here in Australia is a demonstrated working freelance community. Sure we have our online networking associations, various kinds of professional memberships, events to attend and portals we can go to for work. But our living, breathing “here we are, we are freelancers! RAWR!†community is lacking.
Unlike overseas counterparts, we don’t have a uniform union. There is no award or even a vague pricing guide we can all refer to in order to charge for work. A lot of the time, we need to blunder through learning as we go when it comes to terms and conditions or legal rights and responsibilities. From dealing with cranky customers through to pricing ourselves to survive, there is a heck of a lot of grey area.
Part of the aim of 100 days of freelance is to remove the grey. Another part is to get you thinking about what you can do when the next grey situation comes up. This is about preparing you with contacts and information that will help you get along in your freelance journey by taking care of the baseline. It is also about encouraging you to get inventive during a crisis, make decisions for yourself when it matters and stand up for your rights (legal and moral). And for the most part, end that sense of not having a community if knowledge to draw on.
Another important component is encouraging you to move from reactive freelancing to responsive freelancing.
What do I mean by this?
Freelancing is a busy profession, so often we react to the work we’re given. Our work doesn’t come in steady streams and that gives us less time to plan out our next move in terms of marketing, finding customers and scheduling work. We often end up reacting to marketing, not critically thinking about the job requests we receive, and cheating ourselves out of decent pay by overlooking profit margins when we quote to compete with others or win the job. Many freelancers find it hard to say no.
While we may know the advantages on paper of being a freelancer, it can often be difficult to find the time to carve out a working approach that allows us to take in the advantages of being a freelancer. This is reactive freelancing.
Being a responsive freelancer means:
Taking your marketing seriously by planning your activities ahead of time- and giving yourself time to do them (and do them well!)
Choosing jobs that suit your skill-set and working with clients that suit your working style instead taking any old project and/or taking on the clients we know aren’t right for us
Scheduling jobs on your terms that suit your timetable and lifestyle so you don’t resent lost evenings and weekends
Learning to quote and charge for jobs so you can make a profit, pay your superannuation, cover the bills, save for a house (or overseas trips or education etc) and have a little scratch for fun at the same time
Enjoying the moments of stress in amongst a working life rather than feeling overwhelmed by them
The format of our journey
You’ll get most of your information supplied to you via email. In those emails, you’ll get background, a bit of a story, and then some action points or exercises you may wish to try.
You’re a big kid and it’s up to you whether you take that information on board or try the suggested actions and exercises. Of course, it goes without saying that participating in the exercises and activities will get you a lot further than if you simply read the emails. They’re designed to help you work on your business approach, after all!
Also a part of this is setting exercises and work you send through to me for a second pair of eyes. They are on and around the ten lessons point (lesson 10, 20 etc).
I will expect you to keep your own journal and make your own notes from what you learn and from those exercises. That way, you’ll always have a continual reference point from the beginning of your journey through to completion of the trek.
But it is important to recognise one very important aspect of freelancing:
If you aren’t prepared to hustle, you won’t get anywhere!
At times, I might suggest things that leave you cold or that you would never dream of doing. That’s OK. How you operate is different to me and the other freelancers who have contributed.
However, if you cringe about selling yourself, being upfront about your marketing, hate networking in all forms, are allergic to talk about profit and sales, and think freelancing happens by putting up a website and waiting for the leads to roll in- this isn’t the right line of work for you.
Freelancing is not passive. It doesn’t happen accidentally.
You do need to sell things. You will need to market and network. Profit, money and sales are the bread and butter of freelance careers. You must hustle.
You just don’t have to be the jerk with the spinning bow-tie who molests everyone for their business cards to pull that off. In fact, it’s far better if you aren’t.
You’re going to develop a style of hustle that works for you.
A final note on your 100 days of freelance journey
I’m not a career advisor and I am not you. So sometimes, what I suggest won’t be what you need for your particular situation. Part of being a freelancer is learning when to listen to your fellow freelancer and when to ignore them.
However, I have collected information, points of call and other resources that can help you make the most out of your freelance journey. This will include books, videos and a bunch of other stuff that has helped me.
I am also open to kick arse suggestions you’ve discovered that aren’t featured within the course.
When it comes to law and taxation, as things in these areas change on a regular basis and can also have large ramifications, I’ll give you places to check the info and a few helpful help lines. I always counsel freelancers to check any legal or taxation advice given by a fellow freelancer and to seek professional sources.
The lessons will be delivered via email. I’m attempting to get a few podcasts together (if not, you’ll see PowerPoint’s on Slideshare) and finalising a few lists. Plus you can always participate in discussion via The Freelance Jungle forum. And we’ll have two coaching calls of half an hour- one at the midpoint and one at the end- so you can discuss your specific problems not covered by the course itself.
I was originally going to email you each day, but feedback from early participants has said that is too frequent. So you will receive a larger email at the middle and end of week.
If you really don’t understand anything and you’ve exhausted help via the forum or if your emails suddenly stop appearing in your inbox, please email me via rebekah@unashamedlycreative.com.au
Welcome to the trek- you’re in for a happy, proactive ride!
Oh, one final thing- your first bit of homework!
Your first tasks are...
Join The Freelance Jungle forum and introduce yourself. This is a mix of people doing the course as well as general freelancers who share advice and links on occasion. Yes, it's GooglePlus. You'll be surprised at how supportive GooglePlus is to Australian businesses. You'll learn some great places and people to follow as part of this course.
Journal exercise: Write down 3 struggles you have as a freelancer that you’d like to change by the end of the 100 days. They can be as personal or professional as you like.
See you on Wednesday!
Bek