Recruiters. When you’re working for a recruitment firm and you decide to go it alone, do you have 6 months money put by and a steady flow of fresh candidates and clients?
It’s never a good time to go freelance.
20 years ago I had a decent job at a fantastic agency, but artwork being artwork, it was never going to go anywhere. So I went. I worked with good people who were highly skilled at what they did, but I was never going to be able to hit their heights, partly because I’m not a designer (natch), but mostly because I didn’t have the years of experience. Yeah, everybody wants experience but they don’t want to pay for it. So what you have to do is cock things up and invoke eye-rolling in your line manager for at least 5 years, then go freelance.
No one will want you to go freelance. You don’t have enough experience to go freelance. You don’t have the requisite After Effects/Figma/Aldus Persuasion skills. You’ll need to have £1million in savings at least, but really you should have a trust fund and be independently wealthy. No need to take my word for it, just ask any recruiter; “The market is really quiet at the moment”, which is something I have been hearing from recruiters since 2005 or something. When I left the fantastic agency, I took 3 months off and did a bit of travelling. Before I left I tapped up a couple of really good printers who I admired big time, along with an innovative repro house, and asked them if I could do some work experience with them once I was back. 3 months later and I’m back in London, skint, kipping on my brother’s sofa and in dire need of work.
MacPeople (RIP) fooled numerous agencies into giving me work. I realised I had more experience than I thought, certainly I was able to spread that experience across multiple agencies that did retail and POS (Astound – again, RIP) healthcare (Wooley Pau) and recruitment advertising (some bods called Work Communications in Holborn). The last one negotiated my day rate down as they said I’d just be doing Quark all day. As it turned out I spent the day retouching some shots of knackered-looking mars bar packs, but I’m not bitter.
I managed 5 months before I ran out of patience (and bookings of course) and found a good full-time job again.
Much later, when I was a full-timer on the lookout for suitable freelancers with relevant experience, I was lumbered with a smaller budget on day rates than the top end of the going rate, so I took a chance on a couple of people who were probably more competent than I was when I started freelancing, and they both did really well with us. I don’t think either of them had planned to go freelance when they did, and I’m sure that’s the case for loads of freelancers. They were just trying to make the best of a bad situation in their case. It’s all very well telling people to come into freelancing at the optimum time and with loads of money stashed, but life doesn’t work like that does it?
I have no regrets whatsoever about going freelance, and that isn’t because I’m earning more money (I’m probably not) or because I can have more time off (I can’t). I have had 2 different full-time roles in the past that I have hated because I’ve been stuck in them for 3 and half years and 2 years respectively. If I were freelancing at those places I would have taken what I could out of them and moved on after a week/month/day/morning. I would’ve had to have read a lot more bedtime stories to my children though.
you are not special 