National Freelancers Day 2022 was inspirational

On 16 June, I attended my first National Freelancers Day, an online conference organised by IPSE, the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed here in the UK.

It proved – as I’d hoped – to be an opportunity to think about my business qua a business, independent of the industry I work in. In some cases, that provided new insights and ideas. In others, I confess I found myself harrumphing ‘Well, that wouldn’t work in my field!’

I reckon that’s an indicator to give it another think, to make sure I’ve not dismissed something out of hand, rather than finding points of contact that might spin off into the most bodacious idea!

Three strands of programming (money matters, marketing yourself and community & values) ran simultaneously in the main sessions, with smaller activities offered in the breaks, to network and with panel or group discussions, plus a keynote from Jo Farley, the journalist who co-founded Green & Black’s chocolate.

A phone’n’browser app was made available for you to examine the agenda and plan your day (and now to watch videos of the sessions you had to miss). I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to book free one-to-ones with experts in various fields as none of those took my fancy, but they were there.

I’m not going to drone on about everything I saw and heard that day, but I am going to pick out some highlights.

Robin Waite of Fearless: Stop underselling yourself – how to confidently charge more

Robin Waite is a whirlwind. His ideas are a breath of fresh air, delivered at top speed!

He talked a lot of sense but it needs some internal realignment of beliefs. Top takeaways:

1        Charging by the hour or day is unethical – the worst people at the job, who take the longest, end up charging more

Hmmm, well, that assumes the best and the worst charge the same per hour, and I’d also say that charging hourly can help dissuade clients from scope creep in a way a fixed fee wouldn’t.

But charging by the hour can also leave the final budget painfully open for the client, and it’s one of HMRC’s tests for self-employment, whether you’re paid by the hour (a strike against your being self-employed) or charge a fixed price (a big tick for self-employment).

Charging by the hour or day also means you’re charging for your time, rather than for the value you bring to your client, and puts a limit on the amount you can earn, of the number of hours there are in a day. So this is a knotty one and, as we like to say in editorial circles, it depends; what’s the context?

2           The market rate isn’t what you think it is

Robin drove a coach and horses through the ‘what’s the market rate’ agonising by editors I see happening on social media. The Office for National Statistics has calculated – across all industries for small businesses – that the top 10% freelancers earn 60% of the value of their market, the next 30% earn 30% and the bottom 60% of freelancers earn 10% of the value of the market. (I have only Robin’s word for this, rather than a link to the ONS site – I’ve had a little look, but you really have to understand ONS’s terminology to find stuff in there!)

Applying this data, Robin pointed out that if you’re not in the top 10% – in there with the folks earning 60% of the market share – you’re charging less than the market rate.

3           Other people don’t necessarily know what they’re doing – copy them with caution!

We were also warned against comparing rates with others and being guided by them. The people you’re comparing your rates with may have no idea what they’re doing, they may have different needs from you, different skills and niches, and may even be about to go under as a result of chronic undercharging. You have no way to judge. If you have no idea what to charge, why would your competitors?

As Robin cheerfully concluded, someone has to be the most expensive – why not you?! Price is rarely the final arbiter of why a particular freelancer is engaged.

4           Money mindset is established early

How early? Between the ages of 4 and 7. This was a shocker, as money mindset is often discussed by editors who follow Malini Devadas. So, editors, if you’re struggling with your money mindset, you now know how far back you need to look. I passed this nugget along at a recent meeting of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s Cloud Club West, where we’re all familiar with the concept of the money mindset. Twenty astonished faces emitted twenty gasps.

Karen Webber of Goodness Marketing: How to make marketing feel good

Karen Webber was a joy. Besides Goodness Marketing, she’s also involved in The Ethical Move, which, in itself, starts to make you feel less creeped out by marketing. Very few editors I know actually embrace marketing with gusto. To most of us it’s a necessary evil, and we do it badly and grudgingly and then complain it doesn’t work, so we do even less.

Well, if we don’t make ourselves known to the people who are trying to find us, they won’t get the right editor and we won’t get the work. So there!

Karen was deliciously independently minded. The number of times she dismissed all the ‘shoulds’ of marketing, especially for freelancers like those in her audience that day, was liberating. She recognises that a lot of the advice for marketing is aimed at large businesses with the staff to handle it, and that it simply doesn’t fly for sole traders.

We were advised (as we were in several sessions during NFD2022) to identify our values, and to operate in accordance with them – this is a major step towards making marketing feel less gross.

Once we have our core values defined (which will probably change through time as we ourselves change through time, so they’ll need revisiting every five years or so), then we have the key to the antidote to shrinking from marketing and the eeeuwww feelings it can engender.

The steps sound simple, but take a lot of thought to make concrete: build a plan of action on strong foundations, using a framework of sustainable, feel-good action. Simples!

Karen then unpacked this for us, revealing the foundations of a marketing strategy but was adamant: do not think you’ll have a perfect, flawless, linear journey plotted out from the start. Just concentrate on deciding on a focus point to keep you shuffling forward, and have pauses to reconsider the trajectory you’re on, so you can adjust and realign as necessary. It’s not realistic to try to write the perfect strategy document covering the next five, or even two, years.

Once you have your values in your conscious mind, it becomes much simpler to create content, to form a connection with the people you want as your clients, to show prospective clients they’re in the right place and it just feels better.

From a practical point of view, try:

• having a key message for the quarter or month, which will help content flow, and develop your marketing into a loose plan, so you’re not adrift with no idea of what you can write about next, but you’re not hidebound;

• writing evergreen content that you can repurpose, recycle and repackage; and

• thinking of marketing consistency being about quality, not adherence to a rigid timetable.

The rest of National Freelancers Day 2022

There was so much good stuff crammed into the day – about what good work looks like to you, and how to build your business on that, from Julia Payne of The Hub. Jo Farley’s keynote on Doing Good While Being Freelance (another focus on your own values) has me looking at sites such as Lend With Care and the plant-a-tree charities, of which there are several working in the UK and internationally, from the National Trust to Ecologi and a list of nine possibilities from Impactful Ninja.

The final session of the day was on three key ingredients in making goals happen, a fine reminder to put all the grand ideas sparked during the day into action, and actually making the changes – and making them stick. This was delivered by Zoe Thompson, of Phoenix Lifestyle and Wellbeing Coaching, who also pointed out the importance of being aware of our values and aligning our actions to them, as well as giving some excellent advice on walking the walk.

And then there’s the smaller stuff I attended on the day – on LinkedIn, CVs, home offices – and the sessions in the other tracks that I’ve yet to explore.

So I heartily recommend National Freelancers Day, and in 2023 it’s on 15 June. Put it in your calendars now!