What to do when freelancing isn't how you thought it would be

If your freelance dream of working on a beach, mojito in hand isn't your reality, welcome to the club. But here are three things you can do to make your freelance life so much better.

When I first started freelancing, I woke up with the lyrics to George Michael’s Freedom! bouncing around in my brain. I imagined my life to be like this: Waking up whenever I want, mooching around bookshops, hanging out in cafes with my laptop, long lunch breaks and maybe a post-lunch nap, and clocking off at 4.30pm to head to the pub. The reality, as I’m sure you can guess, was different; for me, it was a persistent existential dread coupled with a panicked search for work.

About a year in, I had developed a solid roster of clients, but life was still far from what I’d imagined. I was working extremely long hours – one miserable year, I worked till 4AM on Christmas morning for a client who insisted they needed their report by then – and was developing a hunch back from being permanently at my computer. Clients seemed to assume I never needed to take a sick day or holiday, and that I’d always be available, even on weekends. Even when I got paid what seemed like a decent rate, there would always be hidden extras – calls or extra research that would mean that by the time I got paid it never seemed to match the effort I’d put into it.

In short, for a few years, freelancing really sucked. Over the subsequent years, I had a couple of staff jobs at New Scientist and the World Health Organization, but always came back to freelancing as the constraints of office life were just never for me. By the time I went freelance again in 2019, I knew I had to do things differently. In general, I hate overthinking things and detest pro con lists. But when I’m doing something that just isn’t working out the way I want it to, I analyse it to figure out how to change things. And these are three of the most important things I found.

1.     You have to manage your time like a business

It can feel like a gross Gordon Gecko motto that time is money (if the George Michael reference didn’t lose you then Michael Douglas’s Wall Street character might, so apologies but I am 47 and stuck in the ‘80s/’90s), but when you are a freelancer, this is absolutely true.

I would spend hours having calls with clients, or answering emails on weekends that weren’t being accounted for in my rate. It felt to me that by going over and above, I’d be more likely to be considered for future work. And what’s a few minutes here and there?

But as we know time = money. So if you don’t account for the time you work on something – i.e. ensuring the client pays for it – then guess who’s paying for it? Yep, you. Few of us value our time as much as we should. But think of your time as a resource; while time as a concept is infinite, our own time in a day or week is painfully finite. So the time that you are spending out of your own pocket on a client’s project is costing you the opportunity to bring in new clients, find interesting ideas, or sacrificing having a much-needed walk or have lunch with a friend.

If it’s intentional, then it’s fine to spend more time on a project than has been allocated, but make sure you understand how this changes your income. Let’s say you are charging £300 a day and so are being paid £1500 for 5 days work. If you spend 2-3 hours on phone calls and emails and maybe another hour on research that you don’t bill for (accounting for about a half a day all in), suddenly you are being paid £272 per day without realising it.

The reason I talk about treating yourself as a business, even if you are writing your freelance pieces in pyjamas while sitting next to a cold cup of tea, is that successful businesses always charge for the work they do, and if something ends up taking longer or costing more, they will negotiate this with their clients.

2.     You can negotiate and still keep your clients

Maybe it was imposter syndrome, a worry that there were loads of freelancers clamouring for a handful of jobs or that creatives are rarely taught skills like negotiating money or terms, but this was one of the toughest nuts to crack in terms of my mindset when it came to freelancing. I was convinced that if I ever asked for more money, or turned down work that wasn’t paying enough for the skills it required, that I would be blacklisted by those clients.

But this is because money is so laden with emotion. Asking for more and being refused it can feel like someone telling us we’re not worth it. When the freelance landscape seems meagre, it can be tempting to take badly paid work on the thinking that “something is better than nothing”. But this way lies a life of having to work long hours just to pay rent and bills, and being constantly fearful of sickness or of taking a holiday.

What changed was having a lawyer friend when I worked in Geneva. In any negotiation over money, he said, someone is leaving that room (even if that ‘room’ is a metaphorical zoom one) with the cash – either it’s you or the person you’re negotiating with. “And if you are good at your job, there is no reason why you should be the one leaving money on the table”.

It is hard to do, but the next time you negotiate, try to take the emotional stakes out of it. Maybe pretend you are playing Monopoly. The worst a client can say is ‘no’. In 20 years, no-one has ever looked horrified and screamed “Who do you think you are?!” when I asked for a higher rate. Often, people will pay you what you think you are worth. This doesn’t mean clicking your fingers and quoting that L’Oreal advert saying “Because I’m worth it!” You do need to present your case - to sell your talents and experience and explain why you should be paid more. And if they say no, then you can decide if you want to bring in better-paying clients.

3.     Boundaries are fundamental for your sanity

Companies these days like to refer to their staff as part of the family (problematic for so many reasons); if that’s the case, then freelancers are the hired help. Freelancers are the ones that clients email on a Friday saying “it would be great to get this by Monday to present to the team!”, leaving you working over the weekend.

I’ve edited major health reports in which I am the last person to receive the draft to edit before it goes to the designer. Countless times, a draft arrives in my inbox several weeks late because staff have been fiddling with it in-house, yet I then have to rush it through because the designers timelines are somehow immovable. Again, this means working late or at weekends. Anyone working in science or politics seems to treat weekends like working days, and I’m often emailed on a weekend for input into a project that could have easily waited till Monday.

As with money, pushing back on this blatant disregard for my own calendar has taken me too long to learn but having boundaries around my free time has been instrumental in having a healthy work-life balance. It does not matter whether those hours are spent on my sofa, eating cookies while I watch And Just Like That. My time is quite literally, my time.  

If none of this resonates, then high-five, my friend! You have mastered freelance life and I salute you. If any of it rings true though, let me know in the comments, or via email. And watch this space, there is much of this to come over the next few months. If you haven’t subscribed already, what are you waiting for? Come on over.