Freelancers need appraisals too

Today marks the end of my 3rd month as a self-employed consultant.

In true nerdy style I decided to celebrate by doing a quarterly review.

As a solo business owner, I'm now admin, management, C-suite and Board all rolled into one - and while I won't go as far as to do a presentation to...um...myself, I still think this is a helpful process.

The good

Turns out I’ve earned 18% more than in my old salaried role and am on track for that to increase to 20% in the next quarter.

I’ve landed ongoing work with three major clients, all of whom make brilliant contributions to society, and have had great feedback from them.

I also:

• Coordinated my first ever podcast recordings
• Travelled the country for a series of film shoots
• Started weekly sessions with a leading business coach
• Joined my local co-working space
• Continued my pro bono commitments, including mentoring three talented young women and running a book club for career changers
• Ceased work with a particularly toxic client

Oh and most importantly: I'm very happy!

The bad

But it’s been hard too, no doubt about it.

The main issue is exhaustion.

I’ve fallen into the classic business owner trap of working mornings, evenings, weekends, on the train (where I’m typing this now…) and basically every other conceivable moment, on top of the ordinary 9-5.

Interestingly, this isn’t so much the client delivery work – that is quite manageable and self-contained, and I have no problem telling clients that I’m clocking off at 6pm.

It’s the other stuff – all the non-work work that I wrote about last month. Activities like networking, research, refining your business systems, financial projections and fleshing out new business offers have no natural end point, so it’s easy for them to balloon. All the more so when you’re in flow.

But we’re only human, and no matter how much flow you’re experiencing, your mind and body will start to complain if they’re never given a chance to eat/walk/see friends/watch Sex and The City re-runs/switch the hell off.

The ugly

Happy to report there’s been no ugly. But here are some nice photos from the past month.

Film shoot in Thames-side Studios

A great spot for networking - Ladurée in Covent Garden

Pepper helping me prepare for Book Club

On a rare walk: Greenwich Park Rose Garden flooded with beautiful wild flowers

Where next?

Reflection is all good – but it’s only Part 1. Part 2 is working out how to tackle what you uncovered.

So here are my commitments for the next quarter, to address this issue of time management and wellbeing:

• Keep networking calls to 30 mins max
• Purposefully turn down additional freelance work to make space for working on and launching my business (this is going to be hard…but necessary)
• Reinstate a hard stop time of 7pm on weekday evenings
• Instate bedtime of 10.30pm Sun – Wed (I’m realistic – I can’t maintain this all week)
• Have a restful long weekend by the sea in August complete with full digital detox
• Enjoy a week-long break in September + set out of offices across all devices (I've only just learned how to do this on texts and Whatsapp and am v excited to try it out)

I’d love to hear other freelancers’ and business owners’ tips for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. The more practical the better! Do you use timers? App blockers? An accountability buddy? Have you outsourced certain tasks to a VA? How do you turn freelance offers down without losing out on future work?

Till next month,

Fabienne

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