Creative professionals are generally told not to work without a paycheck. But can strategically offering your services for free actually catapult your career?
As always in the world of freelancing, career development, or even “growth hacks”, there are numerous advices you can read about online. However, spend enough time on these different articles, and you’re very likely to start reading the opposite theories.
Personally, I strive to have a close personal relationship with my clients: if I feel that this relationship is likely to go well, I’m definitely up to sacrifice a short term financial gain over a reliable connection.
When you’re a sole trader, like yours truly, your reputation is all you’ve got. It’s all about the long term and your reputation as a working professional.
For all freelancers out there, I wanted to highly recommend this podcast from the talented folks at Relay.fm/1
A quick pitch:
David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they’d had enough. Now they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are… free agents.
They are two friends who are independent workers/freelancers with their own business, and the conversation they have are sure to resonate with all of us here :wink: At least, I know they resonate with me, on a personal level!
Although I’ve been freelancing for over a year, which sounds like such a long time ago, I’ve been freelancing for over a year you guys! So, while I’m generally past the topics they’ve talked about on the podcast, so far, I totally identify and remember going through each and every one of the situations they discuss.
Hello everyone! Welcome back for Issue #4 of my daily series of posts. I’m pretty stoked that I’ve been able to write these small posts once a day.
Today is going to be interesting. In the past 36 hours, I’ve ended up booking multiple activities for the day.
First of all, I’ll be meeting up with one of my best friends, Elodie.
Elodie has just graduated from her Master’s degree and is looking for either a job in PR/Communications/Marketing, —preferably with a Premium Sportswear or Luxury company— or launching her own (side-)project and company.
She’s actually coming over so we can work on our separate projects, but also to catch-up and see what we can do together! “Co-working, it’s a thing!”
Then, I’m meeting up with Sarah for lunch. She’s a friend from high-school whom I’ve continued to keep in touch with over as the years have gone by. I actually haven’t seen her in a while, and I actually look forward to catching up with her.
Then, my good friend Marisa will be in town for a couple of days, and that’s probably going to be a highlight of the day, possibly of the week!
Marisa is a friend I’ve met during my 2011 internship in San Francisco. Since I left San Francisco, we actually managed to meet up back when I was in Paris, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.
She’s graduated this past summer and is currently going on a roadtrip throughout Europe. And after hitting Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, and Carcassonne, she’s on her way for a few days on the French Riviera, before heading over to Italy. I’m really looking forward to it.
And finally, to end the day on an even better note: we’re meeting up with Kevin for drinks in Antibes. Kevin is another of my best friends — we’ve known each other since we were 8 years old, going to the same middle school, secondary school, and high school together!
Americans continue to clock in far more hours than their European counterparts. Europeans worked 19% fewer hours than US citizens, which correlates to about an hour less each weekday, a new working paper shows.
If you look through the post, you’ll notice that France has the second lowest number of hours worked per week, just before Italy, with about 19.3 hours.
I’m not exactly sure where this comes from, and how it measures against the actual 35 hours work week we have here. However, it does correlate with the ongoing idea that the Frencharevery productive, being able to “do the work” in less time than others.
Obviously, this is an average, not reflective of everyone in the French population. And just like any country-wide census, YMMV —Your Mileage May Vary.
Just… keep in mind that I might be biased on that one!
iTunes is notoriously finicky, and its team tends to take a Honey Badger approach to the concerns of indie podcast creators.
You can file this under “OH HAI, This actually happened to me.”
See, for about a month and a half, my podcast was essentially in iTunes limbo, which dropped my monthly listenership by about 60%. Sixty Percent!
In that time, I had numerous conversations with the support team who confirmed that they had fixed it, or forced the refresh, but each interaction took, at the very least 3 days between a message or action, and the actual refresh or result being in effect.
In a way I’m incredibly grateful not to be financially reliant on iTunes, because I would have lost half of my income from this revenue source otherwise.
Also thankful to have a good listenership over other sources (such as Mixcloud, Soundcloud, and most of all the dedicated microsite.)
I think this is important for a number of reasons —
First of all, you can't be reliant on a single platform. Just like anything in business, you can't put all your eggs in one basket and need to diversify. In my case, that means uploading to the services I've mentioned earlier, as well as here on my own blog.
In a similar vein, I truly believe that owning your content & distribution channel is very important. It's great to have access to a bigger audience on a specific website, but you are limited by the platform as well as the terms & conditions. On your own website, you can do whatever you want.
At this point in time, I'm trying to reach as many people as possible, so being easily findable on different sites, including my own, is a great way to see how different people and communities react.
The trolls who take a toll on their fellow Twitter users with alarming regularity have finally taken a toll on Twitter itself. Bloomberg reports that the Walt Disney Co. ditched a potential acquisition of the social-media platform, in part because it did not want the family-friendly Disney brand to be associated with the hate speech…
On a hopeful note: maybe this will get Twitter to look into it much more. Also worth noting that this would be the perfect time to let Twitter users buy the company!
“Here’s a story about a prosecutor in North Dakota charging a journalist with ‘participating in a riot’ because he was unhappy with her coverage of that event.”
An infamous quote from George Orwell comes to mind: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
This post marks an attempt to publish more personal & regular articles. I’ve actually written this part yesterday, but thought I’d split my post in two smaller and more manageable bits.
Throughout the day, I try to switch off of my client work to catch up on interesting newsletters, and other bit of news.1
You can also find me hanging out on my Twitter or Facebook feeds sporadically. Interestingly I’ve ditched Snapchat and catch up on Instagram and its stories because I also use the app for my client work. Posting on several accounts, I also take a minute to see what my friends have posted recently.
Around 3-4pm, until 5-6pm, I get to see and hang out with the girlfriend, as she comes home for her break from work (she works in a restaurant). Usually, she comes home and naps, and later I walk her to the restaurant and we stop for a coffee and sweet treat on the way. It’s a good way for us to spend some time together throughout our work days, but also for me to head out and take a breather from work.
It also serves two more purposes:
First, it allows me to find the time to run errands before heading home.
And perhaps more importantly, it helps me find the time to find my composure and reflect upon the tasks I need to finish before the end of the day. I usually make a mental note, or sometimes jot my thoughts down in OmniFocus, my productivity app of choice.2
I usually stop working around 7pm, when a French TV show called Quotidien comes on the air. It’s a mixture of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — two of my favourite daily talk shows in the US. Essentially, they take a critical look at the day’s news, focus on one important topic in the first half, and then take a more relaxed approach to subjects of concern.
With the French Presidential election coming on next year, you can be sure that politicians are heavily featured in the spotlight these days.
To be continued tomorrow when I’ll be talking about a totally different subject…
Here’s something else that I need to write about: newsletters I subscribe to, podcasts I listen to, music platforms I use (and their different purposes.)↩
Having recently purchased a GoPro to help me with my Vlogs, I was waiting to use the exciting new Quik Desktop, the laptop-friendly version of a french-made iOS app to help streamline the entire editing process.
Turns out it was already available, but needed to be found on the support pages of the GoPro website. (It wasn’t on the main page when I looked 10 days ago.)
Long story short, I’ve finally found, downloaded, and installed it, and I’m excited to give it a try!
This post marks an attempt to publish more personal & regular articles. Let’s see if I manage to write more frequently.
It’s Monday here. Just like any other time during the week, I woke up, and started my day with coffee and catching up on a TV show. Most Mondays, it’s a broadcast of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, from the night before.
After this start, I usually walk up the stairs in this lovely duplex apartment, to take a shower, which usually gives me time to listen to some music and clear my thoughts for the day.
Then, it’s finally time to get to work. While I catch up on emails and other planning & notifications, I tend to listen to Monocle’s The Globalist1, to catch up on global news, away from a crazy 24h news cycle.
At the moment, I’m actually quite worried about the humanitarian crisis in Syria, but also about the prospect of the upcoming Second Cold War - which sounds like something out of a Marvel comic book but is actually a real prospect. And these two issues are actually tied together. 2
This week, I’ll be taking some of my client work in a different direction, and I’m excited to test new things to get better results on their behalf.
It’s always interesting to start with business goals and then look at what you can achieve at the current point in time, given the things that you can do, and the stuff that needs to be put on the side until you get the right assets and moving parts.
It’s rare that I pick up a printed book or newspaper these days. But I’m buying more magazines than I ever have – they’re just better and more expensive.
There’s nothing else I need to add here — My own experience closely ressembles' Adam’s. And to go one layer deeper[^1], Offscreen Magazine, the one used in Adam’s first photo here, is actually the magazine that kickstarted my obsession for indie magazines, back in 2012.[^2]
It is Friday, October 14th at the time of writing. A lot has been happening, outside of work, and I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.
On today’s TibzLetter:
Work
Life
Preparing a trip to Paris
Halloween
Work
But let’s talk about work first: until my Parisian trip (November 2nd-10th — see you there?), I’m trying to focus on doing a lot of work and billing my clients accordingly, so that I can take it easy (easier?) by the time we get to the end of the year…
Some days are a bit hectic, I have to say, balancing some time between two clients on tasks & projects that both have certain level of urgency. But some other days, like today, are a bit quieter and allow me to breathe in a little.
Life on the French Riviera
The weather has been really nice here, up until October 2nd. I managed to beat my self-imposed challenge of wearing shorts every day of the month of September.
Since then, it’s been a bit grey-er and a bit cold-er. And as I type these lines, we’ve just had about 36 hours of straight up rain and storm. It’s nice though: I swapped continuous small bits of rain 3 times a week for a much warmer, nicer weather where, in turns, you get 2-3 days of intense rainstorm.
Preparing a trip to Paris
I’ll be in Paris next month. (Or did I mention that already?) Well, I’ve already got a few activities planned out, amongst which one exhibition and two concerts:
John Carpenter Live at Le Grand Rex (the formerly biggest cinema in Europe).
Which leads me to…
Halloween
Halloween is in about 2 weeks, and I’ll be travelling to see my family and relatives when it happens, so I decided to start early this year: this means finally watching these classic late 1970’s to early 1990’s horror movies from the Master himself.
On my watchlist so far, I’ve got:
The “Apocalypse Trilogy” which actually consists of
The Thing
Prince of Darkness
In the Mouth of Madness
They Live
The Fog
Halloween
Escape from L.A. (I’ve seen the first “Escape from New York” recently)
Christine
Big Trouble in Little China
And as a non-Carpenter-related bonus:
Halloween I & II (the Rob Zombie remakes)
Hellraiser (which believe it or not, I’ve never seen)
If you have any other suggestions, I’d be happy to hear it: leave me a comment below!
That’s is for me this week. I had a lot to talk about, but I’ve saved some for next week! Take care all of you, and have a great weekend!
Just taking a quick moment on this beautiful monday morning to let you know that I'll be in Paris between November 2-10th. And I'd love to meet up with readers of the blog, as well as friends and just about anyone else, hence this announcement.
My plan during the week is to work, go out, have fun, attend a concert or two, and make the most of what the city has to offer. So hit me up, ahead of time and let's get together!
With upcoming projects and travels coming soon, I’ve decided to invest in slightly better gear for my nomadic aspiration. TL;DR: I’ve bought the new GoPro Hero 5 Black to help me record memories on the go, without the need to always have my bulky (bulkier) camera with me in my bag.
Here’s a quick comparison and test between the GoPro and the Sony Nex-5N I’ve been using until now…
It took me a while to get this one out, and I’m still thinking about ways to improve the recording, editing, and publishing process — finding a faster/simpler workflow.
Anyways, please enjoy “the end of the summer” !
It took me a while to get this one out, and I’m still thinking about ways to improve the recording, editing, and publishing process — finding a faster/simpler workflow.
After the attack in Nice, it’s been really good to enjoy live, go out, and spend some quality time with friends! Thanks to all those wonderful friends that have been around during this period!
We went to Eze this past sunday. It’s a charming medieval village on the French Riviera. Its unique Exotic Gardens sit on top of the Mediterranean Sea.
This past year has been a wild ride, to say the least.
In May last year, I finished working for Realmac and started working as a contractor for a low-key B2B SaaS company.
Officially, I’m working like an employee, working the whole week on behalf of this one of a kind small business. They’ve been around since 1991, as old as I am, which is something to celebrate in this fast industry. And they cater to a very specific niche: offering a desktop software licensing & analytics solution for ISVs (independent software developers).
I’ve learnt a lot in this past year, and in the past few months, I’ve even managed to find the time and discipline to take on more client work and work on new projects.
As a contractor, my #1 problem is: What happens if Primary Client is unhappy about my work? The answer is simple: I will need to find a new opportunity veryvery fast. Of course, living in Western Europe, there’s always plan Z: being unemployed for a couple of months until I figure things out, but I’m proud to have avoided any form of unemployment so far and would like to keep it that way.
To try and bypass this, I’m trying to save a little bit of money every month, as a safety net. At this point in time, let me tell you that the net is not nearly as comfortable as I’d hope it would be. Then again, I don’t think one would ever be satisfied about the size of a financial safety net.
Thankfully, I already have a few things going for me: I don’t have any debt, I’m able to pay my bills, and I’m slowly trying to get more money and experience from side-projects, missions, and other client work.
But this is not enough: I won’t always be in good health, or working for this client. And as someone who’s very pragmatic, I know that if I continue working as a freelancer, there likely will be some hard times where I won’t have either work OR an income. Thankfully, this is a risk I’ve acknowledged from Day One and I’m working on a generic roadmap, setting things up to try and avoid the downfall of freelancing.
So, at the time of writing this article, here are my short, mid-, and long-term plans:
Short term:
I’m continuing to work for the B2B company. It provides me with a lot of responsibilities, and I’m still learning a lot. It pays me moderately well, enough to afford to pay the rent and bills.
Mid-term:
I want to take on more client work. I’ve come to realise that for sole-traders such as myself, there’s a wealth of opportunities offering marketing services to smaller companies. The hard part is landing those early gigs.
Originally, I was thinking about working with local businesses: they clearly don’t have the money to afford a new website designed by a marketing agency, and they don’t have the time to spend on marketing campaign, social media, ads, SEO and all of these different topics. But maybe I could handle it for them, for a smaller fee. However, I’ve come to realise that most of the time, they aren’t willing to spend the money on those services, even at a discount compared to industry standards. And most of them are looking for an old-school “webmaster” to manage everything for them. My goal was to teach them how to manage their ecommerce websites or social media presence, not make a commitment for months (or worse, years to come.) It didn’t work out for me, but I have other things I can find and do.
In the short term, I have found some new clients that require my services, for completely different things that I handle day-to-day with the Primary Client. This helps me diversify my income, which is the single biggest threat to my existing working life.
Oh, and if you need some help with your website, marketing, or customers support, get in touch!
Long-term:
That’s a very good question.
I’m trying to build an audience for my podcast, and I’d like that to start making a little bit of money on the side. It doesn’t have to be my full-time job, but I love having and sharing these conversation for the Digital Digest podcast, and I love hearing what people think about these interviews. My dream would be to have a financial complement, at the very least, if not relying on podcasting as a business.
I know it’s a long shot, but with patience, continued efforts, and good content, I’m confident that I can make it. It just might take a couple of years, and I’m OK with that: I knew it coming in, and, as Josh Long would say: “for every overnight success, there’s 10 years behind that.” I’m hoping that learning from the best helps me accelerate my learning process and avoid a few mistakes along the way.
For the rest, I really like the freedom that comes by being a location-independent freelancer. And I truly think that the what has been the hardest part so far, is now behind me: finding new clients and projects to work on. For the rest, I’m hoping to follow in the footsteps of my other independent friends (like Adam, Greg, Axelle and Paul) and trust that my passion, reputation, network and current gigs are enough to help me find some new work in the future.
And there you have it, a not-so-certain 5-year plan that could change today or tomorrow. Times are a-changin', hey?
