Fractional Vol. 7: Welcome Back
Oh hello again. My guess is you weren’t hankering at your inbox for it, but I took the month of May off because, well, things got expectedly busy–mostly on the personal side. John and I didn’t get married, and by that I mean, we threw a party for our 100 closest friends where we celebrated being together without the whole contract, ceremony, pomp and circumstance side of things. It was all of the good things, and related to the subject matter of this newsletter, it was a welcome excuse to truly pause the work. Not pause in general, because anyone who has planned any kind of party knows how much work it is. Here’s us:
Enough of the personal stuff, you’re thinking. That’s not what we’re here for. Let’s talk business. But if I were to categorize these past two months, they have really been about striking a balance between personal and professional. Business has been a little bit slower, but in a way I welcomed to make time for extracurriculars. Beyond the party, I:
Traveled to New York for 5 days to see friends and a whole lotta theatre (more on that below)
Finished the first draft of a pilot which I’m brushing up now that’s somewhere between Social Network and Her, and not nearly as good as either of those
Wrote the first draft of a feature script (109 pages!) in a marathon of a weekend
Got back into my running routine as I resumed training for a 10K
The Business
Business has been steady if a little lackluster. To recap where I’m at right now:
I have one client that is a former job who has been my steadiest client for three years now. It’s a good team and I enjoy my work with them, and my work spans copywriting and some strategy.
I have a second, smaller retainer client responsible for 10 or so hours a month where I’m helping them on their core messaging and collateral.
I have a third, smaller retainer client in the entertainment space where my work spans strategy and voice. This project is currently scoped at 20 hours a month, but has bumped up recently due to need. I’m particularly energized by this one at the moment, because of the unique vision.
And a fourth, very small, ad-hoc client in the circular fashion space that is local. They are a business with a fantastic vision, but the work has just been more sporadic than I can count on.
In June, I expect a few new business opportunities to come through, including a project that will span most of the month for a major enterprise business, and potentially one or two other one-off projects.
The best part of all of the above is I’m looking at each of these clients, and I genuinely like the people involved in every one of them. When I think about the victories of this transition to freelance, that’s it. I get to work with good people who I really jive with (of course not all the time, that’s not practical, but most of the time certainly).
The Financials
So how much money does this boil down to? The reality is, I’m underbilling at least one of my clients which is causing me a little bit of mental strife, but my totals for the month of May came out to $14,850, up slightly from April’s $14,700. These are below what I would ideally like to make, but certainly enough to get by and good enough for this first year of freelance.
What’s Keeping Me Up At Night
What’s plaguing me is how much my income is based on just hours worked. As mentioned above, I’m overworking for a client right now, and that literally translates to dollars not in my wallet as I turned down a project last week that could be another steady retainer. It’s not all dollars and cents; I need to do work that’s meaningful for me, too, but I’m still figuring this out–and ideally I’d love to find some passive income. To that point! I made my first investment this past month in a friend’s startup. Of course that always comes with risk, but hey, building equity has to start somewhere.
On the passive income point, a silly little thing John and I did for our party is create an audio guestbook. As a writer myself, I sometimes feel underwhelmed by folks’ written messages; we tend to censor ourselves and the messages end up being a little generic, so the idea was that we would:
Give every guest a unique code
At the party, they would go to a designated space (John’s office), enter the code into a website he made, and could hear a custom message from us to them. Yes, we recorded about three hours of audio for this; one message for every person or couple.
Then, they could leave a message for us.
We called this the Feelings Machine. And let me tell you, it was a hit. So John and I are debating whether we could productize that, seed it with a few event planners or wedding planners, and see if there might be something there. Who knows? If anything, it’s a very organic origin story.
June means it’s payroll month (yay!), and also according to my accountant, I have to make a big payment related to my year-end taxes, so more on what that actually looks like next month.
Oh! And also by way of not sleeping, I updated my website because (1) I wanted it off of Squarespace and (2) I started to feel like less is more, especially as I’ve been in the position of needing to turn down a bit of work (which might continue through the summer, depending on project scopes and needs as maybe a few of us might try to shoot a movie. But more on that next time…)
And Lastly…
A few recommendations of things I’ve enjoyed this last month…
If you can, go see An Enemy of the People on Broadway. Holy cow.
My favorite spot to eat in LA right now is Loreto. Great food, near-perfect margarita, perfect vibes.
For the party (and I promise this is the last I’ll talk about it), we bought everyone sweats so they could get comfy once they go to our house. Those sweats are so good and they are from Everybody.World. Do yourself a favor and grab a pair. We paired them with the long-sleeved tees for a full lewk.
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