First 12 months of freelancing full-time: 👍🏻 or 👎🏻?
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Like everyone else, the past month has has been filled with my last client project of the year, lots of Christmasy things, end of the year tax prep, a tiny bit of free time, and then general organization and planning for next year.
I’ve been reviewing my business and generally getting an idea of how I did this year, because… 🥁
2021 wraps up my first full 12 months working full time for myself! Woo-hoo! 🥳
It’s actually been (as of posting) 1 year, 6 months, 16 days, –but who’s counting? 😂 ––In mid June 2022, I’ll hit my 2nd full year! 🤯
Anyway, I want to be completely honest with you in how this first year went so you can see what it’s really been like to launch myself into the ether, because there were ups & downs, wins and losses, just like everybody else!
2021: a year in review
FINANCES
I’m going to start here because I feel like that’s the biggest question for you if you’re just starting out on this journey yourself, or if you’re contemplating it but haven’t made the leap yet.
To backtrack a bit:
In 2020, I had no active client list; not even a waitlist. I’d basically taken the first 6 months off of freelance client work, with all the stress I was experiencing as my day job’s workload slowed, as Covid19 became more and more scary, –as my husband’s job was getting tougher and tougher so he was working later and later and I picked up the slack at home with general chores & stuff that we normally shared.
From June to December 2020, I was getting unemployment checks while on furlough and trying to build this business from basically nothing. That fall I had rebranded & renamed my business, my audience completely changed, my prices went up –it felt a bit like starting from scratch even though I’d been “lightly” freelancing from 2015 - mid 2020. I'd landed one really large project from a local business and wrapped it up by the end of that year.
In January 2021, I’d just wrapped up my last project of the previous year, and had nothing else booked yet. Scary, right? Yeah, it definitely could’ve been. By now I’ve gotten a lot better at treating these situations like a science experiment & taking the emotion out of it so I can step up & do what I need to do to make things better without as many emotions clouding my judgement.
Instead of dwelling on feelings of lack and scarcity and fear, which I absolutely could’ve done (and would’ve had it been a younger, less experienced me) I just planted my feet firmly in the general knowledge that I could make this work, and I focused on content marketing (ie: marketing via consistently posting content that would drive traffic).
I was blogging 2x weekly, trying to be consistent on social (admittedly, I’m just terrible at that), and setting up my business for success in Notion & Quickbooks while I had the free time to deal with that admin stuff.
My WORST month:
To prove that we’re not all perfect, I’m happy to report that January was a ridiculously slow month. I made a whopping $269. 😂 The WHOLE month. That could’ve felt like utter failure, –but I remained positive! I had money in the bank from the previous project, so even though January sucked, I was still able to pay myself.
This is where I tell you to read Profit First. It will be SO helpful for you to manage your money for exactly these kinds of situations! It’s actually the most entertaining finance book you could ever read.
One of the reasons I still felt positive was because I was starting to book out some projects by the middle of January, and some of those invoices just weren’t due yet, so I knew February would be better –and it was.
I also stumbled onto a great opportunity when an old contact showed up in my inbox wondering if I had the availability to help them with weekly design work. –Um, yes please!, I thought. Like attracts like, and I had told the universe I was ready, so BRING. IT. ON.
I knew that retainer work wouldn’t be a perfect situation, as the client is awesome, but their industry can be stressful. I drafted an independent contractor agreement for retainer design work and we worked together from mid February to August this past year. By May, I was getting enough inquiries that I knew by August I’d have to end that retainer relationship, so I gave them plenty of warning. They were super sad to see me go, but understood.
Between February and July, between my retainer work & my own projects that were coming in, I’d been maintaining my previous 9-5’s salary amount, give or take month-to-month.
So now you know my WORST month, –what was my best month?
By August, 2021, I had my best month at $10,653. 🤯 Not only that, but in addition to that I had several $5k months in the last half of this year too.
To be perfectly honest with you, I have to admit that I didn’t even notice this had happened until last week, when I was reviewing my month-by-month Profit & Loss statement for the whole year.
When I saw it,… –if my jaw could’ve hit the floor, it would’ve fell off its hinges and clunked onto the ground.
Overall:
This first year I’ve earned more than I ever had at my 9-5 and I could. not. be. more grateful for the wonderful clients I’ve worked with so far, or more proud of how far I’ve come as a business owner and individual!
From a #legit terrible start in January, to earning 1.5x my previous job’s annual salary, this first year was AWESOME and there’s not a second I’d take back or do differently, because even the “bad” things taught me valuable lessons.
I’ve also never been so happy on a day-to-day basis, literally.
I’m so much more laid back and easy–going, and happy to fit in a couple extra weekly household chores when I can during the week, so my husband can enjoy more of his guitar-building hobby on weekends.
I’m smiling and laughing a lot more. I’m so much less stressed out, my schedule is fairly flexible, and my income ceiling has disappeared!
WHAT I COULD DO BETTER
Otherwise known as failures! But I honestly don’t see them that way, they are things I tried but didn’t work so I’ll try again in another way until I find a way that will work, or realize it’s just not in alignment with me/my business. Simple as that. 😁
My biggest issues this year have been:
my blogging consistency – I’ve skipped a few posts this year (& almost all of December’s) because I frankly didn’t have time to write it until the day it should’ve published and so I just said f*ck it and let it go. Sometimes it’s just not worth it to stress over these things.
consistency on social media – I am truly terrible at this. I don’t like being in #alltheplaces #allthetime or even being on a schedule for this. Using a scheduler to post for me is great, but engagement is lower on those posts. This hasn’t been a priority for me, but it’s also because my system for creating this content currently sucks.
not taking good care of myself – I looove what I do, and I can get so easily wrapped up in this or that rabbit hole until the next thing I know a whole day has gone by and all I’ve had is coffee, I’ve barely left my desk, and our dog is DYING for some playtime with me. This is not okay.
productivity & efficiency waned – there were lots of days where I sat down at my desk and just started doing stuff. I stopped checking my to-do lists and after developing this bad habit at full steam, I realized I was busy but not doing anything effective to grow my business or give me back more time in my day.
enough time to plan for a product release – I announced my Notion templates “early” (HAHA!) thinking I had plenty of time to figure that out, … and it turns out I had nowhere near enough time. I threw the sales page up, late, and got 1 sale before I followed my gut & took it down the same day. The templates were done, but the delivery, organization, collaboration and education around them wasn’t and I didn’t feel good about it. It felt more like I was pushing too hard to release it just because Black Friday was coming up, even though it wasn’t ready yet. I can have a Black Friday-esque sale any time I want, so why push myself?
Side note: I am a staunch believer in always following-through with things I tell people I’m going to do, so this “failure” was hard for me. I knew in my heart it wasn’t ready, but I’d told people it would be and I really struggled with not following through on that. At the end of the day though, no matter how much the product costs my customer, whether it’s $47 or $5,000, I want to KNOW it’s worth every penny (& more) and be excited –not stressed & bent out of shape– when I release it. And I just wasn’t there yet. So if you’re still on that waitlist, just keep your eye out; good things come to those who wait. 😉
expenses were high – I had quite a few “bucket list” type courses I wanted to take this year, and I did. That added up to a frankly embarrassing amount of money, but I’m still happy I pulled those triggers! Some I finished, some I’ve only started, and some I want to go through again. (Glad I have lifetime access because I still need to block off some time to finish a couple of these. 😳) We also moved across the country this year, so there were a lot of new expenses related to getting set up in a new house and in a new state. None of this will be recurring into 2022 though, thankfully!
WHAT I DID WELL
Annnnd we’re ending on a high note here! These are things that I’m proud of accomplishing, but I’m still likely to tweak and make better for next year. After all, there’s no such thing as perfection (says the recovering perfectionist)!
raised my prices, again – as my experience and skill set changes and evolves, I’m getting better and better at my craft. I’m also getting faster and can offer my clients the proverbial “more” with each new project I take on.
In a coaching session around pricing I realized that prices shouldn’t be as static as I’d had them in the past AND that other experts on my level were shocked at how low my prices had been. 🤪 Live and learn! (Then apply it!)
booked out services – from August on, I’ve stayed booked out about 1-2 months in advance and that seems to be my average now, booking into 2022 already. This is a HUGE accomplishment that I’m incredibly grateful for!
found a bookkeeper – This was a huge (read: H-YEW-GE) weight off my shoulders and it’s served me really well. Galynne, over at Duly Noted Financial, set me up in Quickbooks Online in early 2021, trained me on how to manage/use it in my day-to-day. This is not my zone of genius, and I’m well aware of it. She helped me on a quarterly basis to help me clean up my books, reconcile my accounts and keep my mind at ease. Worth. Every. Penny. Also, Galynne is fast, easy to work with and generally just an AWESOME lady.
This did present some issues to work through, as I was now invoicing outside of Dubsado, but still using Dubsado for contracts & proposals. It took some trial-and-error, but I finally figured out how to use them both together, without using the ‘sync’ integration. Read more about how I use Dubsado with Quickbooks in this post.
updated all of my contracts and policies – many of these were kinda out of date, so I bought brand new ones that come with lifetime updates from the Creative Law Shop so I won’t have to buy them again.
(Side note, use my affiliate code LAUNCH10 to get 10% off any purchase, any time –stackable on any current sales!)
dropped & added affiliations – I dropped affiliations with companies offering anything I was no longer actively using, whether I liked their product/service or not. I also added new affiliations for stuff I’m actively using, love & already rave about. That includes my new affiliate status with the Creative Law Shop, the Standout Squarespace course, Loom, and Logo Package Express, but I left the affiliate program for The Contract Shop and a few others. You can see my full (current) list of affiliations here.
learning better work/life balance – one thing I am continually getting better at is balancing work with my free time. It’s a hard line to walk when you love what you do and could do it most days, all day long. But this fall I finally stopped working so much and gave myself a new, more rigid schedule:
Monday – Thursdays have normal hours
only half a day on Fridays because my husband’s weekends are Fridays & Saturdays
‘grew a pair’ + say no more often – this year I had several situations crop up where I had to remove myself from a stressful environment, where I had to charge more than I’d quoted as the scope increased, where I had to enforce a project’s rescheduling policy, among other things. All ended well and I was glad I held those boundaries.
I put myself “out there” more – I said yes to things I normally wouldn’t, and initiated contact with people I wouldn’t have before.
was a guest on Paige Brunton’s blog this year, and I did another interview with her team that won’t publish until 2022 (eek! 🤩).
had an interview with a ConvertKit team member for the December spotlight in the ConvertKit community.
SquareKicker shared several of my blog posts about their plugin tool across their channels.
opened a door for a possible collaboration with a fellow web designer
had an Instagram Reel go viral, with (as of posting) 790,470 plays and 4,594 likes!
had Zoom coffee chats with LOTS of people I didn’t know, but loved meeting! (as an introvert, this is an accomplishment!)
MY WORD OF THE YEAR?
At first, my knee-jerk reaction to this WOTY-thing was, –NO. It seemed like such bullshit, to be perfectly honest.
But, as I wrap up this review, I began to think… why the hell not. 😂 So, here I am, doing the cliché thing.
And since I’m being honest here, as the end of this year approached faster than I could even keep up with, I realized that the biggest thing I need to improve in order for next year to be even better, is to develop better strategies and processes.
So, the word on my mind at the end of this year is STRATEGY. 🤷🏻♀️😉
“Have champagne in the fridge ready to go! Thanks again for all your help and for making this process simple and fun!”
Ready to say buh-bye to that outdated website?
Emma was, and she paid me the best compliment a designer could ask for too.
Web design process = fun? Who knew?!
