Celebrating four years of self-employment
Part one: taking the leap into full-time freelancing and how I found work
The end of September marked my four year anniversary of being a full-time freelancer, earning 100% of my income from self-employment. There have been lots of ups and downs but I haven’t had to give up yet, which feels like something to celebrate.
I was interested in working for myself in some capacity long before I actually made it happen. Maybe I was choosing the wrong jobs but I thought there had to be more to life than counting days of annual leave and endless meetings about meetings on Zoom and crying in the toilets after those meetings and spending a fortune to live in a city I didn’t really want to live in, just so that I could go to a job I didn’t really want to go to. Surely?! My dad is self-employed too (as a one-man-band gardener), having found his previous salaried jobs soul-destroying. He describes himself as ‘basically unemployable’ now and I wondered if that feeling could be hereditary?
I loved the idea of setting my own schedule and having more flexibility but I had no understanding of how to make enough money to actually live on. I had dabbled in writing, public speaking and social media in the years since finishing my big run around the coast of Britain but often for free, or in exchange for “exposure” and gifted kit, tickets, etc.
And, famously, you can’t take exposure or free socks to the bank. I knew that other people actually paid their rent (or, even more miraculously, their mortgage) without having a 9-5 though. When I ended up diving headfirst into self-employment it was largely spurred on by this knowledge. It was the same logic that made me believe I could run around a country: if they can, then maybe I can too?
In this post I’ll share more about personal story of taking the leap into freelance life, my starting point (experience, finances, etc) and how I found work in the beginning. I’m seeing this as a ‘part one’ and in the coming weeks we’ll get into the weeds of what I’ve learned over the past four years, how things look now and practical advice for pursuing a less conventional career.
Taking the leap
I was made redundant from my last full-time position in September 2020. I was working for a charity at the time and my whole job was based around encouraging older people to meet up together in large groups. Suddenly, in the midst of a pandemic, that wasn’t such a good idea.
I’d been in the role for less than a year and I was on a 12-month fixed term contract. I wasn’t eligible for any proper redundancy pay but the way the timings worked out meant I would still get paid for the duration of my original contract (until the end of November 2020), without having to actually work the final two months. This was a blessing, really. I’d recently signed my first book deal, my deadline was looming and I had started to worry about how exactly I was going to finish it on time. A chunk of unexpected paid time off during which I could finish writing felt like a lucky break.
But there was still the question of what to do next.
I halfheartedly looked at what else was around but it was a pretty terrible time to be job hunting, especially in the outdoors/events/travel industries with everything so up in the air.
I wondered if this was the time to have a go at freelancing?
My starting point
I realise that this might all sound a bit gung ho. I suppose it was in many ways, but maybe it’s helpful to clarify what my personal circumstances looked like at the time:
I was 28, single and didn’t have any big financial commitments like a mortgage. I was renting a room from a friend in Bristol for mates rates.
I had no savings but I was debt-free for basically the first time in my adult life.