“These Three Things” is an advice-based series from Offscript. It’s designed to offer straightforward, actionable tips for navigating complicated, complex, or just plain tricky professional situations. The column is geared towards career pivoters, freelancers, and anyone who’s trying to plot a course through uncharted professional waters.

 

If you’re thinking of freelancing, you might wanna consider These Three Things:

1. Buy yourself some financial runway (lining up clients doesn’t count).

I talk to freelancers all the time who speak about getting clients lined up and building financial runway for their business as if they’re the same thing. They’re not.

Financial runway is about building up your reserves so that you can get and keep your business up and running. There’s all sorts of sneaky costs and financial commitments that come with being your own boss, and they start at Day Zero. At the least, you’ll need a place to work, an accountant and/or an accounting software, and a workspace to host your business domain, emails, and calendar. Often, you’ll need a website (developer not included) and an email marketing platform (like the one I’m using to write this very newsletter). You may also need an appointment-booking tool so that people can schedule calls, demos, or consultations with you electronically.

And that’s just the affirmative costs of being self-employed. Don’t forget that once you leave private employment, you won’t have access to the benefits that came with your company. When I left my last job, I lost access to discounted memberships at the gym, free therapy sessions, the food and drink (and heat and air conditioning) that was provided at the office, my laptop (which was the only one I had), and a lot of other stuff that – even though I didn’t realise it at the time – was reducing the cost of my general existence, without me ever really realising it. Luckily, I’m based in London, so access to healthcare isn’t a cost issue, but that’s not the case for everyone.

When I advise people on building financial runway for their freelance business, I suggest that they shoot for six to eight months’ worth of reserves.

When I advise people on building financial runway for their freelance business, I suggest that  they shoot for six to eight months’ worth of reserves. That means getting half a year of your financial existence into the bank before you make the actual leap. It might not be possible for everyone, but in the absence of unavoidable extenuating circumstances, it’s something I strongly recommend.

So, yeah. You may have clients lined up – that’s freaking phenomenal! It’s amazing and it’s exciting and it’s really, really promising. It’s just not financial runway. Get those ducks in a row, and make sure they’re marching straight to the bank.

2. Don’t assume you know your niche.

Every freelancer I know (or follow online) has refined, tweaked, or totally changed their offering since they launched their business. And every one of them launched their business with a pretty clear vision of what their offering should be. In some cases, this is simply a natural evolution – a response to your clients or a reaction to your market. And that’s fine. Great, even. Adaptability is a pretty critical characteristic for a freelancer to have. But in some cases, this shift is the result of not fully understanding where you can add value for a person or a business – or worse: not knowing what people or businesses you should be targeting, in the first place.

Don’t just assume that you understand exactly how your skills and experience can offer your clients value.

I recommend spending some serious time investigating the space you’re trying to serve. Don’t just assume that you understand exactly how your skills and experience can offer your clients value.

There’s tons of great advice from folks with far more experience than me about how to identify your niche (all highly google-able), so I won’t get into much more detail here, but I will pass along one exercise that helped me a lot . . . write a positioning statement. Write (and re-write) a positioning statement like your professional life depends on it, because one day it might.

A good positioning statement includes three main parts: 1) your primary service or services, 2) the type of clients you’re providing your service or services to, and 3) the specific value that you offer.

Here’s an example:

Offscript provides brand & content strategy and production services to startup and scaling product-led businesses to help them find their voice, tell their story, and accelerate commercial growth.

If you’re finding it tough to distill your business into this kind of statement, that’s probably a sign that you haven’t yet found your sweet spot.

3. Get to know how you actually work best.

If you’ve always been a full-time employee, you might have a skewed perspective on what conditions make it possible for you to work your best. In the way that a goldfish kept in a tank won’t grow to be five feet long, a professional who’s always worked in an office might have no idea that they actually do their best work from a cafe. One of the great things about freelancing is that, often, it gives you the freedom to find your ideal working environment and conditions.

One of the great things about freelancing is that, often, it gives you the freedom to find your ideal working environment and conditions. But be careful! Freelancing is all fun, games, and coffee shops until you realise that you actually need routine and processes and systems in order to thrive and get work done.

But be careful! Freelancing is all fun, games, and coffee shops until you realise that you actually need routine and processes and systems in order to thrive and get work done. So while you’re busy becoming the freshwater goldfish that you were always meant to be, keep in mind that there might be some holdovers from your past life as a nine-to-fiver that are actually necessary for your professional survival and growth. If you can, try to identify them before you make the leap, so that you can set yourself up to thrive in your new role.

To do this, I recommend an old-fashioned list:

In column A, write down the resources, platforms, and tools that you currently have access to which help you work well. In column B, make a list of resources that you’ll be able to access as a freelancer. Cross reference your lists. If there’s something in Column A (access to a senior graphic designer, or expensive software, for example) that doesn’t appear in Column B, you’ll need to rethink your priorities, or come up with alternatives.