March 1, 2024

Blessings

Blessings

Today, March 1st, is Day 1 of Year 5 for me as an independent consultant.

I've learned a lot but this isn't a things I've learned article. It's me counting my blessings in public.

What follows, therefore, comes in several shades of positivity. That's not to belittle how hard it can be. But the cons of a freelance lifestyle are obvious. It can be precarious. It can be lonely. This isn't about the cons. It's about the pros. And the pros, so far, have been better than good. Some of them are glorious.

Money

I've made more than I need every year so far. That includes Year 1, from a standing start that coincided with a global pandemic. Lock down came two months after start up. Thanks are due to many people. I'm a lucky boy.

How much is enough? I know exactly how much is enough. Every freelancer does, to the penny.

Every freelancer knows how much they need as a baseline. But how much should you want as a ceiling? I think about this a lot, from my relatively comfortable position of privilege.

A perverse silver lining of Lockdown was that it imposed a spending freeze. Was that really a good thing? The freeze was synonymous with a loss of freedom. But it was a forced reboot of my attitude to money. I did a brutal audit of my Direct Debits. I renegotiated the things I wanted to keep. I took a chainsaw to the things I didn't. I saved a lot of money in the process, without feeling that I'd sacrificed anything truly important. My lifestyle is more frugal than it was but it's a long way from austere. I don't skimp on important things like socialising, culture, and travelling.

I'm reminded of something Barry Hearn said on a podcast:

"There are lots of people that achieve short term success. They get lucky... But they haven't got in them to be sustainable. And that's because they don't think poor."

I think poor, but I also think privileged. Earning beyond your needs is a privilege. Consuming beyond your needs is unsustainable. As a brand strategy consultant, I'm a cog in the machine of capitalism, a system that creates perverse incentives for destructive behaviours.

It's a freelance blessing that I don't have to take financial growth as a given. It comes back to how much is enough. I'm only responsible for one mortgage.

In short, I'm lucky and I'm conflicted. This is a wrestle in progress. It's a mixed blessing.

Time

First Money, now Time. It's like Dark Side of the Moon.

I know how much money I need but I haven't put a figure against how much money I want. I do have a target for how little time I spend earning it.

I keep meticulous records of my fee earning time. FreeAgent software (another blessing) makes this easy. It makes lots of important things easy.

There are people who will be surprised that I'm a timesheet zealot now that I have the choice not to be. I was once an outspoken critic. Timesheets are a poor means for the ends they're usually designed to achieve. However, these days, recording time is an end in its own right. I don't want my total fee-earning time to exceed 100 days in any year. So far my busiest year added up to 90 fee earning days across all projects.

I work very hard, but I don't have to be ridiculously busy. I have plenty of time to commit to other interests. That's a blessing.

If I can earn what I did in my most lucrative year in the same number of days as my least busy year, I'll be a happy bunny. I'll be doubly blessed. (Slightly obscure Meatloaf reference there.)

Freedom

From Pink Floyd to George Michael.

And the Beatles.

Money can't buy me love, but it does afford certain types of freedom. The main benefit of billing more than I need is that it builds up reserves. In start-up vernacular I have a decent runway. I don't have to work for quite a long time.

So I have the freedom to only work on projects where the problem is interesting and the chemistry is good. Freelance work has never felt like a slog.

And I'm on a firm footing to be confident with my pricing.

Daylight

The dark side of freelancing is the lack of control. So any form of control that you can claw back feels like a victory.

I control when I do my work.

So, in four years I have never walked my dog in the dark in the morning. I get up later in the Winter. The days get shorter but only my evenings are affected. A small win perhaps. But a big blessing.

Work

It feels like I'm doing the best work of my career. It feels like an adventure. Most of my clients are founders and CEOs. I'm dealing at the top, which brings benefits and responsibilities.

If something gets approved, it stays approved. If I have to nudge for payment, I'm nudging the person who can kick the finance department.

Project work for a CEO is different to a retained relationship with a Marketing Director. If a CEO brings in an outsider, they want that person to get them; really get them. I've always had a knack for that. And they don't want diplomacy, they want candour. I've developed a knack for that. I was ready for this in my mid fifties in ways that I wasn't ten years ago.

People

My process relies on talking to people. I talk to my client. And I talk to my client's customers. My work depends on primary research. It's always fascinating. It's always revealing. It's work that rewards good listening. The stuff that I learn can't be found on Google and it can't be generated by Chat GPT. I dare say that there's no such thing as a job that's AI-proof, but mine is AI-resistant.

Respect

Ageism is a problem in advertising. It's advertising's problem as much as it's the problem of the people that advertising prematurely discards.

Ageism is not a problem in brand strategy consulting, not in my experience. Quite the opposite in fact. I've won projects because of my age, not in spite of it. I've successfully used my age to infer greater wisdom in support of premium pricing.

It's too easy to disrespect freelancers. It seems like everyone has at least one horror story. Before I took the plunge I spoke to several generous people who shared their freelance experiences, warts and all. They gave me the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. As a result I resolved from the outset to have a zero tolerance attitude to being mucked about. It's that control thing again.

Fortunately, it hasn't been an issue so far. Every client has accepted my favourable payment terms. Most of them have paid on time. A few have made a point of paying early, bless them. I've had to chase the odd invoice, but not very hard.

I've only been ghosted once, but it didn't cost me anything. It will cost them something if their name ever comes up in conversation.

Growth

This has nothing to do with money.

I have a coach. I've never been coached before. This kind of learning is exhilarating. Being seen is transcendental.

I also have a mentee. I hope that I'm one tenth of the blessing to them that they are to me.

Style

It took me a long time to find my style as an agency CSO. It took me a long time to even realise that style is important. Style is vital to fulfil a CSO's obligation to set the tone for the methods and outputs of their team.

So I knew that style would be important as a freelancer. It still took me the best part of four years to hone my consulting style and give it a name.

It's the name of this newsletter: Lowfalutin.

Several people have told me, unprompted, that they like it and that it suits me. It's a skin I feel comfortable in.

Optimism

This doesn't come easy. Perhaps the biggest blessing of all is my partner, who gently but firmly cajoles me into accepting that there might be at least a neutral, if not a positive, explanation for a given set of circumstances. She's always right.

This whole post is about optimism. If it comes across as at all self-satisfied, I'm sorry. Rest assured that it, optimism, is something I have to work at. And if it's heavy handed in this article, that's why. There's a shadow version of this post that pokes and prods at all the crappy stuff. I chose to count my blessings instead. So maybe that work is paying off.