What I’ve learned after 12 months as a freelancer
After freelancing for 12 months, creative strategist Zac Martin now has a mental map of the best agency coffee machines in Melbourne (there's not many), and has learned the hard way not to accept payment in crypto.
12 months ago I took a leap and decided to freelance. One year later, these are some of the things I talk about when people ask me what it’s like.
Managing your own hours is a superpower.
The ability to choose your hours, in terms of when and how many, does incredible things to your happiness. Early on I decided to work no more than four days a week in big agencies. This created time to work on other projects (paid and unpaid), chase new ones or just enjoy a sleep in on a Friday.
The changing cadence also keeps you interested and interesting. I did everything from a three month contract to one project which was literally half an hour. You can choose to focus on one big thing, or juggle ten smaller ones. The latter meant I could do a 15km run in March, which was only possible because I dropped everything at 11am and went for a jog when I wanted to.
You do need to be buttoned down on your calendar management. Even then sometimes things don’t always line up. I’ve accepted a few days of work, then 10 minutes later had to turn down a bigger gig because you’re already committed. Sometimes work just disappears too – I was three days into a month-long pitch which got pushed out by months. Annoying when you’ve already turned down two other jobs to be there.
But that’s freelancing life. The contracts always favour the employer (but you only get them from bigger agencies). It’s why they pay you more.
Despite being the master of my own calendar, my grand plans to work on side projects failed miserably. It’s rather easy to take on more paid work or spend time meeting people for coffee while passion projects collect dust.
Choosing who you work with and what you work on, helps navigate your career.
Freelancing allows you to pick the types of brands, agencies and people you work with. And the projects you want to invest time in.
This year I worked with big agencies, small agencies, entrepreneurs, starts up and consulting my own clients. But you also have flexibility in the role you play in the work you say yes to.
You can reinvent your job title (and yourself) with every new project, pushing into uncomfortable spaces to play around with. One of my favourite adventures this year was developing the marketing strategy to launch a gluten-free brewery. Not quite my heartland of creative strategy, but a category close to my stomach, and a rewarding project which has become ongoing.
You get to flirt around and try on different hats. One year later I have a much closer idea of where the intersection is between what I like doing, what I’m good at, and where the money is.
The market for freelance strategists is good right now.
I am fortunate. I have a good-sized network built from nearly a decade in two large agencies. This created most of my opportunities.
I also have somewhat of an audience (you suckers) – writing on places like Mumbrella helps keep me top of mind as a potential resource. In two cases it also opened new doors which turned into work.
I also realise I fell into an attractive role. I’d suggest large parts of my success aren’t because of how good I am, but rather a lack of freelancer planners in Melbourne. If I was a designer, I’m not sure if I’d be writing such a romantic post.
I also managed the whole year without using a recruiter. They eat a decent piece of your day rate.
The money is great, but you have to learn how to earn it.
The money is really good. I finished the year 36% up on my old salary.
But it takes time to learn what you’re worth. And even longer to be confident enough to ask for it. I sold myself short for at least my first two gigs. To this day still need to stop negotiating myself down unnecessarily, often before the other person has even responded. Never has your imposter syndrome screamed louder than when someone looks you in the eye and asks your day rate. At least these conversations happen frequently, so you get good at it fast. You learn to throw your number out there and then stop talking.
Eventually I worked out to be stupid and arrogant enough to ask for what I thought was a stupidly high day rate. And they said yes. And keep saying yes. I do wonder how this dance impacts men versus women.
If you’re thinking of freelancing, my advice is to add at least 25% on top of what you think you can get. Push as far as you are comfortable and then a little more. Remember you are covering down time, your own expenses, equipment, annual leave, sick leave, training, work beers, etc.
I unsuccessfully gambled with remuneration. Twice on pitches I cut my rate in half, adding 50% on top if we won. Neither paid off (although I did help win other pitches!). I also did one job for cryptocurrency – right now it’s down 60%. This year I’ll stick to cash.
All big agencies are the same, but some have better culture.
Most agencies look and smell the same. The people who work there are kinda the same too. They tend to dislike their clients, work longer-than-healthy hours and think the chaos is unique to their agency. But they are good people who come to work every day wanting to do good work.
Culture is distinctive though. You notice it particularly as a freelancer where you see lots of it fast. It’s most evident in how much an agency encourages you to get among it or put your head down and work. It’s a bit like gravity – you can feel it immediately but it’s harder to see the cause. Sometimes you can tell in the first ten minutes, particularly when someone in IT tells you they don’t allow freelancers on the WiFi.
I didn’t realise it until this year, but in my permanent life I was spoiled with access to coffee machines. Seriously agencies, sort this out!
It’s not all fun and games.
Not having a work crew sucks. I miss the daily banter. Having worked in bigger planning teams in the past, it’s also tough not having another strategist to throw something around with.
Working from home for too many days in a row isn’t heathy either. Especially in winter. For my next stint at home I’m going to find a temporary co-working space.
Unfortunately you rarely get to see work through. You come in, do your piece, and you’re out. You don’t often get the opportunity to nurture and help ideas grow. Last week I saw an ad for a strategy I wrote six months ago which I thought got killed. It wasn’t a very good ad.
It’s also challenging not working toward something bigger. Freelancing is constantly short term. You need to be comfortable with not knowing what’s happening next week, and not relying on fulfilment from big career-defining moments which take time to build up to.
You’ll be tempted into permanent work. I had a few full time and part time offers, one including equity. But while it’s not all sunshine, there’s still plenty to love because…
Freelancing is awesome.
You meet heaps of people. You learn a lot, fast. You rapidly get the opportunity to steal elements you like and learn to avoid those you don’t.
Critically, you get a license to be brutal with recommendations. There’s no client baggage or incentives to get involved in politics. It sounds counterintuitive for a strategist to say, but not being committed long term allows you to approach work with an attitude of: “My contract finishes tomorrow, so I don’t care what you decide – but this is right recommendation”.
My work this year has been better because I was more empowered to take a step back and challenge the client, rather than just answering them.
And finally, I worked out that agencies only bring in freelancers when they need help. So if you can be even a little bit helpful, everyone is bloody happy.
Zac Martin is a freelance creative strategist. This post originally appeared on Pigs Don’t Fly.
Zac brings to light a very hot topic right now.
The Australian market has shifted more and more to a freelance creative market in recent years and may even be approaching a tipping point. While part of this shift has been caused by the agency squeeze forcing agencies to manage a more flexible resource model, and part of this the result of post-acquisition cleanups which see high-earning senior creatives moved out, much of this burgeoning freelance market is the result of new generation creatives seeking Zac’s work/life balance.
And while Zac shines a light on the perceived pros of freelance, and a few incidental cons, ECDs and other agency leaders see a bigger problem for both their agencies and the happy-go-lucky freelancers.
Agencies need to build IP and client relationships in order to protect their accounts. That can only be done with permanent staff who have a vested interest in keeping their clients engaged and happy with the product.
Agencies need to build positive internal cultures. Zac touches on “not having a work crew” and missing the “daily banter”, but it’s more than this. Permanent agency staff not only gel and collaborate intuitively, knowing each other’s goals, skills, and ways of working, but they also form close working relationships that can build into personal friendships. This is the stuff that makes a great positive culture, and makes the work even more enjoyable. Agencies need FTEs to build this to capitalise on the benefits.
What about the effects on the freelancer? Zac closes with “Freelancing is awesome” in a very post millennial attitude, fingers held aloft in a hashtaggable selfie from the back of a surfboard. And it can certainly feel that way in the short term, usually throughout summer and a few overseas adventures.
But there’s an old adage in the ad age. A creative is only as good as their portfolio (or last ad, depending on how old you are).
Freelancing short term can bring in some good cash, let you trial a few different agencies, and skive off whenever you want. But after a year, you’ll start noticing your portfolio hasn’t had anything added to it. Sure, you might find an ad you worked on 9 months ago and rip a copy of YouTube for your reel, but you’re not adequately building up your creative credentials.
Freelancers don’t really get to choose what they work on to “navigate their career” as Zac revels. Agencies don’t tell the freelancer what the project is before bringing them in. Many freelancers never see their projects through to the finished product. A lot of freelance gigs are when there is a sudden influx of work and the agency puts their FTE creatives on the juicy projects and hands the rats and mice off to a freelancer. Or when there just no time to squeeze a fire brief into the permanent resource, a freelance is brought in and given 48 hours to ‘crack it’. None of which produces your best work. None of which brings you the awards you’re going to need to get the next gig. We’ve all seen a freelancer pat themselves on the back on Facebook for an award win of a campaign that they briefly touched on for a week or two. We call it coat-tailing. And it makes everyone cringe.
And that mentality of “managing your own hours” isn’t really a superpower.
While you can decide to take a week off (unpaid), you’re not going to do it when an agency calls to give you another 2 weeks or maybe a 3-month stint. No matter how you spin it in your own head to feel better, you’re not really managing mini breaks. You’re being forced into temporary unemployment because the phone didn’t ring.
And agencies don’t let you “manage your own hours”. Any freelancer who takes on a gig and then calls it in on the second week, or rocks up late because there was a rad swell that morning, or clocks on-and-off daily, or says “I’m gonna take Tuesday/Wednesday off because I got cheap flights to Ibiza” isn’t going to get another gig at that agency. They have a job that needs doing. If you can’t be arsed to do it with all the enthusiasm of a full-timer, then they’ll get someone else.
Financially, the freelance cashflow can be good (especially if you’re one of the best freelancers in town with the phone ringing off the proverbial hook with back-to-back bookings). But because you are “self-employed”, your cashflow is unpredictable. Which is something banks simply don’t like if you ever want to buy a house.
Ask any long-term freelance creative about how awesome freelance is and many will shake their head into their beer and tell you that time they considered becoming an Uber driver just get to some cash to pay the bills between gigs, because there are so many freelancers now that agencies can “manage who they give the hours to” and once your portfolio gets a bit old, so do you.
When it’s time to come in from the cold, ECDs are highly unlikely to hire a creative who has spent more than a few years bed-hopping. Firstly, their portfolio probably isn’t anywhere near as good as a competing candidate who has done a few permanent stints at agencies and got some solid projects in their book, along with a couple of trophies.
This not-so-old dog’s advice:
Yes, freelance CAN be awesome. You can experience new agencies. You can spend a year focusing on your life and travel and fun, using freelance gigs between to stay liquid…
But don’t do it for more than a season. If your portfolio doesn’t get a new piece of shining brilliance added to is every quarter, then an alarm bell should go off in your head. If you don’t have some kind of award (for which you did the lion’s share of the work) with this year’s date on it, then that alarm should be an air-raid siren. Throw everything you’ve got into every freelance gig you get. Don’t burn bridges. You may need to cross over one of them someday in the hopes of getting a full time job.
And don’t get caught up in the giddy swirl of how free you feel, because that freedom will be fleeting and by the time you realise it, you’ll be so far out on the periphery of the creative circle that it’s impossible to get back in. You’ll wake up one day, middle-aged with an online folio that hasn’t been updated in years. And when that happens, you’ll need this:
https://goo.gl/SnBezN
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Despite the 1,101-word justification of the status quo by the “ECD”, Zac is right. The “security” of agency jobs is an illusion. The continuity is an illusion. The clients wanting relationships is an illusion. They just want results. “…in the hope of getting a full time job” gave the ECD’s game away. Nobody with true aspirations hopes for that any more. The world changed and the train’s left the station. If you as a freelancer are a good networker, and if you make money for other people, you’ll always be in work. You’ll never have to become a salaryman again, and you begin to look with sympathy upon those who have to suck that up every miserable day in big agencies that already look like Woolly Mammoths stranded in a desert.
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Epic comment. Agree with much of it. Worthy of its own article.
Interestingly, an early draft mentioned my folio was feeling a little stagnant. But I realised only in the sense of creative deliverables, not strategic thinking. I guess the degree to which this is important depends on which department you sit. And how much your role needs fresh work to open doors.
I’ve found agencies to be very open to four days and giving me time off in the middle of longer stints. They’ve also mostly been rather transparent on what I’d be working on and what to expect. Maybe this is easier for planners than creatives.
Anyway, I’m off to California for a few weeks. Will send you a selfie!
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I am a freelancer and realised that nothing is forever. It is all at the moment. There is no long term relationship, only your service and results speak for itself. If your client is happy, he may come back to you but the moment someone offers $10 less, he will shift there. Just like a regular job, freelancing has no guarantees. The only upside is that it is cost-effective/profitable for the person who hires you and it is freedom for you – https://bit.ly/2NTiPD1
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You will have to swing by Isla Mujeres if you get the chance. One thing I’ve loved about being my own boss, is working from paradise. I’m keen to share that with you.
I’ve just been in London for meetings, and realised that was 1 of 4 in person meetings I will do all year. You talked about getting time back, and that’s exactly what it does for you.
Joshua
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Not sure I agree on this one. Although it’s harder for some skillsets, if you act like a resource you’re treated like a commodity.
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The one thing being freelance doesnt teach you is EQ and how to stay at something and work in a team environment and rally people behind your idea.
Being a hired gun is a lonely and ultimately de-skilling profession. It’s an unfortunate position many of us will find ourselves in.
If you’re getting so much work in this environment it’s because the good ones realise there is so much more to be gained by having full time employment than chasing the next buck.
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Have you freelanced?
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Good piece Zac – enjoyed the perspective
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Thanks Zac. And it probably is easier as a planner. We have hired a few freelance strategists on projects and it has usually worked out quite well. This is because it is project-based, rather than ongoing resource as is often the case with freelance creative. And strategists don’t need to build up a portfolio.
My concern is the tilt toward a freelance creative market and the ramifications thereof for both parties.
My 20 years experience as a creative leader warns current creatives that freelance may not be as awesome as it sounds in your article.
I really enjoyed your perspective and it is great to get this topic out there.
Enjoy California. I’ll also be on holiday in the Pacific Islands, but still getting paid for every minute I spend there. We can swap selfies.
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