The Freelance Mum: A flexible career guide for better work-life balance

Introduction

I’ve been a freelance mum for the past four years and for me, it works very well. I’m the primary caregiver for my children, but I also support myself financially and contribute to the overall household income. I can afford to buy food and clothes for myself and my kids and I can save up for family holidays. The main issue for me when I first went freelance – at least initially – was money; you don’t have that lovely set lump sum appear in your bank, miraculously, at the end of each working month like a PAYE employee does. However, as I discovered, there are ways to secure a reliable income and establish some financial stability when you work freelance as a mum, and I’m going to teach you how.

This book will walk you through the necessary steps to setting yourself up as a freelance mum. From deciding on your career path to launching a website, social media, getting your name out there and perfecting your brand. I’ve also included a comprehensive guide to the childcare options available to freelance working mums, suggested daily routines for optimum productivity, as well as tips on establishing and maintaining healthy work–life boundaries. Using my own experience, alongside tips and advice from a multitude of other mums who have successfully made a freelance career for themselves, I’ll show you that with hard work and determination, any mother can thrive as a freelancer.

So, why go freelance?

Freelancers were worth £119 billion to the UK economy in 2016.

There are 4.8 million self-employed workers in the UK, making up 15.1 per cent of the UK workforce – and we’ve almost all chosen it for the same reason: flexibility. You can decide your own hours and avoid the slog of a daily commute. But the 79 per cent increase in freelancing mums over the past ten years1 speaks volumes about where women stand in terms of work and family. Many of us are keen to continue developing our careers after having children, but only if we can find work that fits comfortably around family life.

This desire to find flexible work might well be the reason why 54,000 women in the UK are losing their jobs each year while pregnant or on maternity leave.2 The work culture welcomes back new mothers who will continue working just as they did before they went on maternity leave – same hours, some overtime – but request part-time work, and you’re out. This is when setting up as a freelancer becomes less about flexibility and more about necessity. With no job to return to following maternity leave, women might register as sole traders, or launch their own businesses that they can run alongside parenting. And these so-called ‘mumpreneurs’ contribute an impressive £7 billion to the UK economy each year.

It’s not always a smooth transition from PAYE employee to freelance mum, but once you’re up and running, it really does offer flexibility in terms of fitting your career around your family. I lost my full-time, well-paid copywriting job when I left to have a baby, which led to something of a career and identity crash. But I soon realised that my 9–6 Monday–Friday job in east London would have been incompatible with the type of mother I wanted to be. So I flipped my panic into productivity, and when my daughter turned one I launched a digital parenting and lifestyle magazine called The Early Hour.

Three years in, The Early Hour reaches 100,000+ parents a month. I’ve learned how to monetise my online platform and build a career for myself around it – including writing freelance articles for the Guardian, Red Magazine, Stylist and Metro. I’ve appeared on BBC radio and TV, and I spoke at Stylist Live alongside celebrity chef Jasmine Hemsley and the founder of Propercorn, Cassandra Stavrou. The Early Hour has acted as a springboard for me; leading to lucrative consultancy work, well-paid copywriting gigs and being made a partner at women’s app, Clementine. This has been my way of sticking two fingers up to the company who employed me as a copywriter but thought I’d become useless as soon as I gave birth. It was my way of saying, ‘you can take away my job but you can’t take away my power’.

That’s not to say it’s been easy. It hasn’t. I’ve had to learn everything from scratch: accounting, building a website, SEO (getting my website to the top of Google searches), how to do PR – after working out what PR actually is – networking, making contacts, social media, how to monetise my website … Basically, everything that running a small business entails. And all while looking after my two children, who are now aged four and one. But I quickly discovered that motherhood can give women the incredible tool of productivity; you find ways to squeeze work into tiny pockets of time you didn’t even know existed before kids came along.

The thought of leaving behind a salaried job, shared office and daily briefs might feel scary, but if you’re keen to spend more time at home than at work, this is probably the path for you. You might have clients or colleagues you collaborate with in some way, but ultimately, you are the boss. You decide your dress code, what hours you’ll allocate for work and how much time you’ll spend with your kids – or doing yoga, or going for a run. There will be no one checking whether you’re back from your lunchbreak on time. If you want to spend all day with your kids then work in the evenings once they’re asleep, that’s totally viable.

Ultimately, there is no easy option when it comes to balancing motherhood and a career. Leaving your child at nursery when you go off to work isn’t easy. Parenting full-time certainly isn’t easy. But freelancing, as a mum, might just be as close as you can get to finding a comfortable, guilt-free, work–life balance.

1

Getting started as a freelance mum

What should my freelance job be?

You’ve decided to take the plunge and go freelance. Perhaps you’ve left behind a salaried job and want to find work to fit around your kids. Maybe your contract ended when you gave birth, as it did for me. Either way, well done for making this decision. It won’t be easy but it will be fun, as long as you’re working in a field that excites you. So, how to decide on your freelance path?

An exercise I like to do every New Year’s Eve is to envisage the coming year. What would I like to achieve? I think about my career, my family, my social life, my hobbies – everything. And I spend an hour drawing and writing up a detailed plan of my dreams. At the end of 2016, this list included having a second baby, writing articles for the Guardian and Stylist and continuing to spend lots of time with my daughter. All those things happened. As 2017 came to a close, I created a visual representation of my dreams for 2018, which included earning £100,000 and writing a book.

This exercise could help you to decide what you’d like your freelance life to look like. So ask yourself the questions below, then write a list, draw a picture, cut photos out of magazines and create a collage or write a story – whatever feels most natural to you. Committing your intentions to paper makes them much more likely to come to fruition. It’s about having a clear focus and knowing what you’re working towards.

In a dream world:

How many days a week are you working?

What are you doing?

How much are you earning?

Are you alone, or surrounded by people – a team, perhaps?

Where are you working from: your kitchen, a shared workspace, a snazzy office?

How much holiday will you take?

Where will you go?

What will your weekends look like?

Remember, this exercise is about everything you’d like to happen. A common barrier for mothers in terms of establishing a new career path is confidence. Many of us find ourselves questioning our identity after giving birth. You look and feel different; people might suddenly treat you as if you’re less capable in the workplace. But you’re not. You have skills and experience, and now you’re going to put them to good use. So, envisage the lifestyle you’d like to lead, think about your skillset and start planning your dream freelance career.

Francesca McConchie (@cakeofdreams) was working as a PA before having her first baby but she wasn’t happy in her job, wanted to be around more for her children and was fed up with paying extortionate childcare fees. She’d been a passionate baker for years, and had always been complimented on the cakes she’d made for her kids’ birthday parties, so when she started getting enquiries from people who had attended the parties, she decided to start making cakes alongside working as a PA. Once she’d realised how little she was making from her desk job after childcare costs, she decided it wasn’t such a terrifying leap to give cakes a go full-time, so she quit the day job and launched Cake of Dreams – her one-woman baking business. She works while her kids are at school – admin and emails on Mondays, then baking the sponges and making different aspects of the cakes towards the end of the week, usually for collection Friday to Sunday. ‘I do have to get up early on Saturday (and sometimes Sunday) mornings nine times out of ten to decorate them, which kind of sucks,’ she says. ‘But it’s easier now the kids are a bit older and hanging off my legs less!’

Lauren Davies (@thisisheka) trained as a designer at the prestigious Royal College of Art and worked part-time in studios before becoming pregnant with her son, Max. When he was three months old, she had her work exhibited but realised that the pressure of producing original designs while looking after a young child was too much. Instead, she began using her hard-earned knowledge on sustainable design and started to offer this out as a consultant. She was picked up by a forward-thinking agency and began to work two days a week from home – managing with a mixture of paid-for childcare and utilising Max’s nap times. With a high day-rate, this two-day working week enables her to lead a financially comfortable life, while being very much involved in her son’s early years.

Anna Jones – bestselling author, cook and columnist for the Guardian and The Pool – wanted a freelance career that would fit well around motherhood, but also offer variety. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid routine,’ she says, ‘which has been a challenge since entering motherhood, as babies like routine. But I can get bored quite easily. I don’t like doing the same thing again and again, so I designed my career so that every day is different. I thrive on that. I’m quite good at being present, which is a good trait for someone who freelances – I’m not worried about where the money’s coming from or what I’m doing each month, I’m just living in the moment.’

For Dr Pragya Agarwal – designer, entrepreneur, journalist and TEDx speaker – it was a different set of circumstances that led to her embarking on her multi-skilled freelance career. ‘Becoming self-employed was not a decision that I took lightly,’ she says. ‘After a career at the top of academia, and facing workplace bullying, stress and burnout, I took a difficult decision to take a break and step away from something that I had worked very hard to achieve. I defined myself through that success and that position, and so this change brought about some loss of self-esteem, confidence and a sense of direction. But it also gave me an opportunity to evaluate what I really was passionate about and wanted from my life, and that was to make a positive change and impact and create a life filled with meaning and purpose that was flexible and gave me back control.’ She now has multiple income streams. ‘This kind of portfolio career suits me because it makes life really interesting and exciting. It has also been good for my mental well-being, as it helps me to keep thinking outside the box and more creatively.’

Whether you turn a hobby into a career, like Francesca; use your experience and knowledge of your industry to offer consultancy, as Lauren does; set up your own shop or small business, like I have; transition into a new but connected phase of your career, like Anna – from chef to food stylist and writer; or find yourself needing a fresh start following an unbearable work situation, like Pragya; it’s about ensuring that you are honing in on everything you’ve learned up until now. You have valuable assets, whatever your previous line of work. So once you’ve worked out what they are, and what your work–life balance should be, you can start making this your reality. All the practical stuff, like childcare, can be considered later. This initial exercise is just about you and your dream freelance career.

Helen Thorn, one half of the Scummy Mummies comedy duo, says:

‘My number-one top tip is to be passionate and love what you do. Don’t just choose the style of working because you think you should or because your friends are doing it. Working freelance is wonderful for its flexibility, but you also face other challenges in terms of irregular income, hustling for work and rejection that you wouldn’t get in other “normal” employment. If you REALLY love what you do, this will get you through those times.

‘One of the most useful things we did a few years into the Scummy Mummies was write down a list of absolutely everything we wanted to do. And I mean everything. And then we chose five to focus on. In the beginning, you’ll be tempted to say yes to everything and be “busy”. But while the money may be appealing, there are no prizes for exhaustion. Think about your business and brand in the long term and what you really want from it. Being successful is about what you say “no” to, as well as what you say “yes” to.’

Passion work vs money work

Now we can get a bit more practical, because while you may have dreams to be a film actor or novelist, it could take time for this to pay. So in the meantime, it might be helpful to look at your freelance career like a tree. The trunk is you; you’re rooted and grounded, standing tall. There are various branches, which might represent the different work you’re doing, but at the end of each branch is a flower – that’s the end goal. It might look and feel as if the branches aren’t connecting, but they are: they are all part of you, and your capabilities, and are linked to your dream career.

For instance, I’m a writer. That’s what I love doing. In fact, one my biggest dreams was to write books. But I didn’t start my freelance career as a published author, that was going to take time. Instead, I sought copywriting work, which paid well. I didn’t have to feature it in my portfolio – some work can just be money work – but I did have to see it as being worthwhile. I focused on the fact that it would be good practice for my later book-writing, as I was finding ways to say a lot in very few words. And I soon learned how to do it.

In time, I built my website, The Early Hour, and this involved editing as well as writing, but also all the techy stuff, social media, cold-calling companies and persuading them to advertise with me. It was loads of work that felt like it veered far from the end goal – writing a book – but they were all branches on my tree. What happened was that I grew a community, and a platform, and this led to me eventually having a pitch accepted by 4th Estate publishers, and the offer of a book deal.

On my journey, I’ve occasionally been asked to do work that I don’t enjoy – like writing the copy for a company whose ethics are questionable, or doing PR for a product I don’t believe in. If I’ve been incredibly strapped for cash, I’ve taken on the work, but now I’m a lot more selective. Experience gives you the freedom to turn down work, which is a wonderful position to be in. The goal is to spend the bulk of your time doing exactly what you love doing: writing, speaking, acting, making music, illustrating, designing, lecturing – whatever it is, you will be able to do almost solely that. Keep those roots watered and the branches strong and, in time, the flowers will bloom and thrive.

Anya Hayes (@mothers.wellness.toolkit) was a managing editor in book publishing before being made redundant. She went freelance temporarily as an editor, because she didn’t have a job to move on to, but also trained as a Pilates teacher at the same time. She was then offered a temporary, self-employed, two-days-a-week desk editor role at Macmillan publishing on a wellbeing imprint. So she did this, while continuing with her training, then stayed in the role while also starting up as a Pilates teacher. It worked really well in terms of balance, though ‘not too well in terms of career progression,’ she says. The job with Macmillan ended, she found work with another publisher and then became pregnant, which, being self-employed, was financially tricky. Since having children (Anya now has two), she’s worked as a freelance editor, Pilates teacher and has written a book: The Supermum Myth. A ‘cobbled-together’ career, says Anya, but one that works in terms of its flexibility, which allows her to work around family life.

Katie Stockdale (@peaceloveandbirth) had been working in fashion before she left to have her baby, but she decided that her maternity leave would be a good time to re-train. So after nine months Katie completed a hypnobirthing course to become a teacher. She then decided she wouldn’t be returning to her previous fashion job at all, so she also trained as a yoga teacher. Of the two, hypnobirthing is more lucrative, though she is breaking even with the yoga. To supplement her more holistic work, Katie is a part-time college lecturer on a fashion-buying course. This balance of regular work related to her previous career, alongside embarking on an entirely new career path, is a great example of how you can utilise your existing experience while also trying out something new.

Anna Jones (@we_are_food) trained as a chef under Jamie Oliver. She was then employed as part of a small team, experimenting with cooking dishes and food styling. In time, she started writing bits for the website. All of this was before Jamie had a huge empire and employed specific people for each aspect of it, which was great for Anna, as she got to try her hand at various career paths stemming from food. Interestingly, from a young age Anna knew she wanted to be a chef but also knew it wouldn’t be compatible with the family life she dreamed about, and this, in terms of her career direction, was a big drive. ‘I knew kids were a way off but I couldn’t see how those two things would ever resolve and work together. I still don’t understand how mums do it – that’s why there are so few at the top of kitchens. You can never be home for bedtime.’ So from the get-go Anna was writing alongside food styling as and when in the hope that one day she’d be able to work from home as a freelancer: writing cookbooks (she’s now had four published), a column (she writes one for the Guardian and another for The Pool). This combination is now her full-time job, which fits nicely around looking after her two-year-old son.

Mollie McGuigan has two children, aged four and one. She left her job as deputy editor of the free daily email website, Emerald Street, after the birth of her second child and she’s now a freelance journalist. ‘Earlier this year I stopped saying yes to every bit of work I was offered and started being more strategic in the work I accepted and pitched for,’ she says. ‘I want a body of work that represents my strengths and interests, a portfolio that has clear direction. It’s meant that I am much more focused and immersed in one area, which has been great for developing ideas and networking. However, it’s also meant I’ve had less work, which has been dispiriting at times. I try to make the quiet times productive: pitching, updating my portfolio, chasing invoices, reading news and features endlessly so I feel tapped into the world, and often it sparks ideas.’