Our First Proper Holiday

Part 2 of our grand farewell tour of Thailand. I've talked a lot about how we travel and work. I wrote a post about what it's really like. Agi and I feel that we don't miss out on anything by working while we travel. However, we both felt that we needed to take a real break. We decided to do a 4 day liveaboard diving trip in the Similan Islands. We booked our diving trip with Khao Lak Scuba Adventures. The company was recommended by one of Agi's friends and they were amazing. At the end of our month in Phuket they picked us up and took us to their centre in Khao Lak. After picking up our diving equipment we got on board Manta Queen 1.

We were given a briefing and met our shipmates. We would be spending our trip with people from England, Sweden, France, Germany, Ukraine and America. A nice multicultural mix. The boat left dock and while we slept the captain took us out to the Similan Islands. We woke up in the morning to see small islands out of our cabin window.

We had told our clients that we would not be available for the duration of our trip so we felt free to relax and enjoy. The next 4 days were amazing. Our routine was:

• Wake up and have coffee
• Dive
• Eat breakfast
• Relax for 2 hours
• Dive
• Eat lunch
• Relax for 2 hours
• Dive
• Eat a snack
• Relax for 2 hours
• Dive
• Eat dinner
• Relax until bed time

Nice!

The diving was excellent and we saw tons of things: barracuda, mantis shrimp, grouper, reef sharks, moray eels. There were 3 highlights:

• On a night dive I saw another diver shining a light on something. I went over to see what was happening. All of a sudden, a lobster came running over the coral towards me. I have seen lobster in tanks in shops and hiding in crevices while diving but I had never seen one free swimming before. It was amazing, it looked like an insectoid horse galloping across the coral!

• We spent most of our time on the boat but on one day they dropped us off at one of the islands so we could climb up to the view point for a look around. Tourist boats come every day from the mainland but they don't arrive until mid morning so we had the island to ourselves. The view from the top of the hill was spectacular, the photo is at the top of this post. The beach was one of the most amazing I have ever seen:

• Perhaps the main highlight was the first dive on which we saw Manta Rays. We had been told to look out for them so everyone was constantly scanning the area. We heard a diver banging on their tank which usually signifies something worth seeing. I looked to my left and saw a dark shape emerging out of the blue. The Manta was about 4m across and swam slowly towards me before angling upwards and swimming directly over my head. I saw its silhouette against the sun shining down through the water. After that, 2 more Mantas appeared and the 3 of them swam around us for the duration of the dive. Spectacular!

This was our first proper holiday since freelancing. We did no work whatsoever and loved it. How do you spend your holidays while freelancing? Get in touch and give me some tips!

Freelance is the Future

I have been advocating the freelance lifestyle on this blog for some time. I am genuinely happy with my work as a freelancer and I think a lot of other people would be happy as freelancers. I also advocate freelancing in person and if we meet and talk you'll find out! I wanted to share a few stories about friends who have recently made the transition to freelancing and what their experience has been like. (All names changed to protect the innocent).

Steve

I met Steve in my Thai class in Bangkok. Steve is a web developer and had been working for a web agency in Bangkok for a couple of years. A couple of months ago Steve messaged me. He had just been told he was probably going to be made redundant because the company was bankrupt. On top of that his girlfriend had recently become pregnant so he was understandably nervous! He knew I was a freelancer and wanted to talk to me about what it was like.

We met up for a beer and discussed the freelancing lifestyle, how to get clients and what rates to charge. He was a bit worried about how long it would take for him to ramp up his business as babies are not inclined to wait while their fathers get their finances in order!

I recently met up with Steve again and was delighted to hear that he was happier than he'd ever been at work. In his own words he'll "never go back". Steve had teamed up with his colleague and formed a partnership. They got in touch with all the contacts they had made and found a few clients who wanted to work with them. Steve is now working half the hours that he used to and making the same money. He is also at home to help his girlfriend and he can't wait to spend lots of time with his baby when it arrives.

Paula

Paula and I have been friends since high school. Paula is a graphic designer by day and an artist by night. She worked for years in very high pressure work environments and was always super stressed. Last year she quit her job and decided to start working freelance.  She wanted to earn enough by freelancing 50% of the week that she could afford to spend the other 50% focusing on her art.

I met up with Paula last weekend and she looked happier than I had seen her in a long time. She had used the contacts she made during her salaried career to pick up 2 big businesses as regular clients. These 2 clients pay her well enough that she can work half her time and create art the rest of the time. She is renting a studio where she goes on days that her clients don't have work for her. She seems extremely happy and I am glad to see my friend looking relaxed and healthy.

What's Your Point?

Freelancing is awesome!

In seriousness, I think this is demonstrative of the world we live in now. The opportunities for freelancing are many and the flexibility enables people to have more control over their lives. The 2 examples here were enabled by contacts made during a salaried career, and that is definitely an advantage. That said, contacts of any kind are beneficial. My main takeaway is to focus on talking to people and making more contacts. You never know where your next opportunity may come from.

If you would like to know more about getting started freelancing get in touch.

Freelancers Don't Have Weekends pt 2

I wrote a post last month about never having actual time off as a freelancer. My plan was to try out the Big Rocks principle from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I said I would follow up and let you know how it went. So how did I get on? Have I become a highly effective freelancer?

So, in a nutshell, the plan was for me to take 10 minutes every Friday and schedule the big tasks I need to do for the coming week. The idea is that I would be reminded of the big tasks and focus on getting them done without letting small things; emails, messages, YouTube, whatever, get in the way. How did I do?

I think a solid C+. Did it help? Yes. Was it great? No.

What Did I Do?

My method was to go through the week and block out chunks of time. The chunks were either a) for specific tasks I needed to do or b) chunks allocated to particular clients. I have 3 regular clients at the moment and I gave them chunks that roughly matched the amount of time I thought they would require.

What Went Badly?  :-(

The smart people among you will have already noticed a flaw in my plan. While I had about the right amount of weekly time for each client, the client demands vary on a daily basis. Client A might have a rush job at the start of the week and nothing at the end while Client B is the reverse.  This meant that I was constantly readjusting my plan because Client A had used their allotted time and ran over into the block for Client B or vice versa.

On a couple of occasions I had multiple clients with urgent requests which meant everything went out the window and I just did whatever was needed. One day I had a quiet afternoon and was catching up on some blogs while my calendar was pinging me every so often suggesting that I should be doing client work. I didn't actually have anything to do so this just filled me with a vague unease...not what I wanted from the experiment!

What Went Well?  :-D

When I had a specific task in my calendar it worked out great. The best example is this blog. It usually takes me about an hour to write a post, find images and get it ready. The problem is that this hour is sometimes the hour before it is published!

I blocked out an hour a week to write the blog. Even though,due to client demands, I couldn't always do the blog in the slot I had planned, I would reschedule it to the next available time. The result is that I was regularly reminded to do the blog and it got written with plenty of time before posting. This was a small but significant stress reduction that was also seen on a few other small jobs.

What Will I Do Differently?

The main benefit I saw from this activity was dedicating known amounts of time to specific activities... like writing this post. Things went wrong when I gave chunks of time to vague activities like "9:00 - 11:00: Work on Client A".

My plan is to continue giving chunks of time to specific tasks like the blog. For the more variable things I am going to allocate chunks of time for "Client Work". These chunks of time are going to be dedicated working time but not for any particular client. This should allow me to focus in the times I am supposed to without feeling bad about not doing work for Client A or B or whoever.

I also have recently developed a man crush on CGP Grey:

I love his Hello Internet podcast and his Youtube channel. He is a big advocate of a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. I am currently reading this book and I'm going to see what I can adapt from it. I will follow up in part 3!

How do you manage your time while freelancing? Let me know.

Freelance Running Shoes

So, Ben shares his passion about freelance and UFC / wrestling. I have also decided to share my story. So maybe some of you would like to make a big step and escape the office and start doing freelance and fully enjoy your passion.

My life is running :-D  I am a big fun of any outdoor activities. Wherever we travel I always take my running shoes. At school I was part of sports club, I represented my school in running races. I was a really dedicated runner until I went to university. You know when you’re at uni it is “party time” not “running time” lol.

I came back to running in 2009, and since then I am unstoppable. I just love to go out and run. It helps me to relax after a hard day at work.

Running includes lots of time for training. Now I am living in Asia timing can be a bit difficult. You can only run here in the morning or in the evening due to the heat.

I am grateful that I am doing freelance, because I can run whenever I want to and I can join as many races as I want to. Some races happen on Saturday so I must go on Friday, to be able to pick up my bib number.

In the last year I have joined many races in Thailand. I finished my first 100km race – The NorthFace Thailand. I took Friday and Monday off, so I could join the race and recover after. Well, one 100km wasn’t enough for me so I signed up for another 100km but in Hong Kong this time. Boom, freelance is awesome, because I packed my trail running shoes and laptop and off I went :-D . I finished 14^th female overall. Not a bad result.

Before I sign up for any races, I know I need to do lots of running to be prepared and avoid injury. My running schedule is very busy. I run 6 days per week. In Thailand I joined Bangkok Runners group, where I met amazing runners. This is another good tip for you, if you are a travelling freelancer then there is a good website called http://www.meetup.com/ Check it out, maybe you will find there new friends which share the same hobbies as you  :-D 

Occasionally, I run on Wednesday mornings in Pattaya (trail run) so I start my work late in the afternoon. Mainly I run in the morning so I set up all my meetings in the afternoon. I just work when I am not running ha ha.

This is why I am so happy I am doing freelance now, so I can run and swim whenever I want to  :-D 

Happy running!

Get in touch if you'd like to know more about how freelancing can support your hobbies.

Work for Free!

When starting out as a freelancer it is difficult to decide on what rate to charge. Very often you will not have references to prove your bona fides, repeat clients to rely on or an established name. In that case the only way to compete is on price. You can work for free, but should you?

The video below has been doing the rounds for a while and is intended to dissuade people from doing "spec work". In case you aren't familiar with the term, spec is short for speculative. A business may ask someone to do work for free on the understanding that this is a "foot in the door" and could result in more work in future or gain you exposure.

Spec work generally crops up in creative fields, although I have been asked for spec work and no one has ever described me as a creative! Watch the video and we'll talk more afterwards.

This topic came to me as a result of my new favourite podcast, Hello Internet. As an aside, if you have never heard of it I recommend listening, the two guys on there discuss some really interesting topics. On the most recent episode they had a fascinating discussion about this video and spec work in general. You can listen to it starting at 1:12 on episode 61.

Listening to their discussion helped clarify some thoughts that I have had on the subject. I wrote a post at the start of this blog about how to compete with low cost countries. In that post I said that you should "demonstrate your quality and the right clients at the right rates will come." I still believe that and my career is proving it as my rates continue to climb. However, while I never had to work for free at the start of my career I did work for much, much lower rates than I do now or ever had since my paper round when I was 12 years old. You can see how my hourly rate changed during 2015 in this chart:

When you are starting out as a freelancer you will need to think tactically. You need to honestly and critically assess your skills; what gives you a competitive advantage over others in your field? As a fledgling writer you might come up with the following list:

• Experience in the legal industry
• Internship with a magazine
• Punctual & reliable
• Poem published on a well known website

Those are all great but one thing that will almost certainly be missing from this list is an established brand name or reputation. If you do have one of those then start celebrating; the world is your mollusc and you can feel free to charge whatever you like. If not, then you might add to the list:

• Will work for free

I don't want to sound very cynical but I don't believe the people who made that video did it out of a sense of civic duty. I think they are established professionals who do not want young upstarts to work for free and drive down the value in the market.

I'm not saying that you should do it. I have friends who have done it and had nothing come of it. I also know people who have gained a benefit. If nothing else you should carefully consider it but be aware that it is a gamble. It's up to you whether you choose to roll the dice.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss this more.