Lessons Learned from a Year of Freelancing

After a career as a salaried employee, I became a freelancer a year ago. It’s been a time of exhilaration, stress, education, and massive growth. During this crash course in successful freelancing, I’ve learned a few things.

Your reputation will haunt or help you.

How you carry yourself has way more impact when you’re effectively looking for a new job several times a year. For better or worse, your reputation catches up with you. It turns out I have a much bigger support network than I realized, because of how I treated people over the last two decades. In fact, I've got as many jobs from account folks and project managers as I have from creatives. Because I always tried not to be a typical creative jerk to them. Of course, I also know some freelancers who are borderline unhireable. Sadly, they set that path for themselves, whether they were nasty or lazy or just plain unlikeable. So be good to people along the way. And don’t forget to tip your waiters and bartenders.

Working Not Working does not work.

Of all the freelancers I have compared notes with, I have only met one person who got a single job through WNW. Maybe it’s great for some, but not for anyone in my fairly wide network. Sadly, it’s the same for LinkedIn. I think these sites are great for business info information: keeping track of the industry and seeing who’s doing what. But in terms of getting freelance gigs, they seem to mainly be good for reminding people who already know you that you still exist. Nothing beats working your network with emails and calls versus trying to connect with strangers online. In the category of “successful freelance job hunting”, the Effie goes to: the human touch.

People are damn busy. Don’t take it personally.

If you reach out with a call, text or email and don’t hear back right away, don’t sweat it. And don’t go to that dark place your therapist couldn’t fix and assume the worst. Odds are they’re not ignoring you, or have developed a sudden hatred of you and your work. One time, I sent out so many emails with no response that I was convinced my email was broken. (And it’s Yahoo Mail, so can you blame me?) But then a couple of days later, I got a flood of responses, good feedback, even a gig. The truth is that when I was an overworked creative director, I know I missed emails that I should’ve replied to. So now I’m just on the other end. (Hey Karma, what’s up?) So please don’t take it personally because people are BUSY. Email them again. Make another call. It’s all good.

It’s crowded and getting crowded-er.

I like to say that the freelance hot tub is pretty full right now. But every week or two, somebody else cannonballs in. Damn, and they’re talented too. Which means there are more people than jobs. So, you’re not going to win if you don’t hustle. (See: Do the Hustle)

Do the Hustle.

Who’s sick of hearing about ‘hustle’? I agree. Nothing personal, Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, Rick Ross, et al. But as tired of it as we might be, here’s the thing. It’s true. You can’t sit back on your couch watching Maury Povich and assume people are going to beat down your door. If you don’t have a job, your job is finding a job. People new to freelancing will hit me up and I can tell they haven’t found that hustle gear yet. There’s an inertia where they haven’t come to terms with this strange new world in which they’ve found themselves. To them I say, get over it. I’ve seen people who hustle and people who don’t. And guess which one is home watching Rachael Ray make a delish turkey noodle casserole.

Outlets over Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi is pretty easy to find. But power outlets? Those are the holy grail. The four-leaf clover. The rose abloom in the desert. Available power affects where I buy my cup of tea, which public space I work in, the particular booth I sit at. Because I can work without Wi-Fi. In fact, I might even work better without all the distract… hang on, somebody pinged me on Facebook… OK, I’m back. Anyway, as I was saying, I can work better when I focus. But I can’t work without power. So I know where every power outlet is within a 10-mile radius of my house.

There are daytime people.

If you’ve always worked 9-to-5 (or 10-8 for advertising folks), there’s a whole class of people you’re not even aware of. I call them daytime people. These are folks who don’t work the day shift. In fact, they might not work at all. And they walk among us. My first week as a freelancer, I had to set up my phone at the Sprint store and I wound up in line behind a very, very angry man. He was complaining to both the guy behind the counter AND to the Sprint person on his phone at the same time. I looked down, saw a blinking ankle monitor and took two steps back. Daytime person.

Different strokes for different agencies.

For almost a decade, I worked at CP+B, an incredible place that truly did things their way. After a while, it was all I knew. But now, I’ve worked many agencies that do things very differently—different cultures, different briefs, different snacks in the break room. Some things are for the better, some for the worse, but it’s been eye opening to see. At the end of the day, you’ll find most agencies are full of smart people trying to do right by their clients. You’ll rarely get a brief brief, but there are always nuggets of gold in there. And, thanks to having Wrigley as a client, you’ll get the freshest breath working at Energy BBDO.

Gauge success by repeat business.

As a freelancer, my client is the agency, not the client. I now get hired to be an idea machine. But I have no control of those ideas after I send them in. Bon voyage, great ideas. They might get presented, or changed, or killed, who knows? The only way to really judge my success is if people call me back. And so far, so good. In the last year, I’ve had the majority of my clients give me more work, so that’s now my marker of success. Because a satisfied agency is my best customer.

If you need copywriting or creative direction (or want to know how your snacks stack up within the industry), hit me up at allenrichardson@yahoo.com.