by John Burfitt
18 March 2016
Updated January 2023
Job cuts, layoffs, reduced freelance rates, the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI tools – yep, it’s fair to say things feel pretty hairy for freelancers right about now.
So, what to do? Well, this is no time to wallow. It’s also not time to be Pollyanna and just slide on the rose-coloured glasses and recite endless affirmations that everything with be okay. Good intentions are great, but this is a time for action.
Working as a freelancer is a business, and here’s how to weigh up all your options and plan what you need to do next.
As a freelancer, you need to have a clear idea of where you work is coming from today, and into the future. So, draw up a real schedule of who are the regular clients you are currently working for, what you have on the slate and what you have confirmed for the coming months. Seeing it all as a solid, physical schedule should be a starting point to work with, and offer plenty of room for evaluation of where your business is as of today.
If that ‘state of play’ schedule is looking patchier than you imagined, you need to do what the corporates call ‘business development’. The rest of know it as, ‘cold calling and finding new clients’. It is a big, big market we work across, but we focus on what we know and where we are comfortable – but there is nothing comfortable about being out of work. Now is the time to identify five new clients you would like to work for – niche publishers, online publications, TV networks needing scriptwriters, content producers, book publishers, corporates needing copywriting. There is work out there, so go find it. And once you have approached those five, try for five more.
Imagine a former client had lost your details but had a new job and wanted to work with you again – how easy would it be to find you? Do you have an online presence? It is staggering how many freelancers still do not have a professional website and only a dodgy LinkedIn and Facebook profile – if that. If you want clients to know who you are, what you do and, most importantly, how to contact you, improve your online presence today. The last time I re-designed the content on my LinkedIn profile, I picked up a great new corporate gig two days later. Make social media work for you, and so clients can make easy contact.
I have written about this philosophy a number of times on Rachel’s List – ‘Pitch, Don’t Bitch’. If you want work, then pitch ideas – and pitch lots of them. To editors, to producers, to book publishers, to corporates, to anyone you want to work with. To do this with some hope of success, you need to have a clear idea of who it is you want to work with. Now refer to Point 2 again. Also, get out and network at MEAA events and the upcoming Sydney Writers Festival. Seriously, the number of freelancers who tell me they just wait for the phone to ring and the email to ping with work without every pitching amazes me. I often wonder how they pay for their groceries.
If all this sounds overwhelming and if the loss of yet another gig has rattled you, then dig into that budget and get some professional assistance. A few sessions with a career coach or mentor can help identify the next path to travel and the goals you want to achieve, and then break down the ways to do so into manageable steps. Sometimes by working with another person who is trained in project planning makes it all much easier. I see my coach Jackie twice a year, and after those sessions, I have a clear idea of what I need to be doing.
Actually, it might be time to call her again to book a new session to work out a plan for what already looks like an unconventional year ahead. Time to get busy.
Got another strategy you can share with us? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Thanks Rachel and John for a *calming* post! I’ve been wanting to find a career coach, or digital strategist, for some time. Can you post some contacts? Cheers
Hi Lani, glad you liked John’s post. I just came across this on LinkedIn which may be of help: https://www.thecoachingcircle.com.au AND I’ve also mentioned Jane Jackson on here before; she has coached a lot of media people especially through redundancies / career changes. Jane’s website is: http://www.janejacksoncoach.com/
I’m sure John will share his own contacts as well.
Great piece John. I’ll never forget the day as a 21year-old journo I, along with 200 other newspaper men and women, were given the heave-ho from News back in the Nineties. Just wish I had had your sage advice back then.
Hi Lani, I am glad this post struck a chord. I have received a lot of great feedback, mainly from journos sharing tales about all the other fields they have now begun to source work in. And I think that is a really interesting trend – the old concept of being a journo working on just a couple of mags / sites/ newspapers is shifting to us becoming writers across a wide range of fields – and the number of fields is expanding. Maybe we have been too limited in the way we have seen our skills, so it never hurts to look beyond and see where else your talents can take you.
The career coach I see is a great person named Jacky Morgan. You can find her at her LinkedIn profile at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackymorgan
She is very good at focusing on what it is you want to address and then helping to plot out the steps to take to achieve that plan.
Good luck!
Thanks Leo for your good words. I too was there in the early 1990s – I had three media companies collapse on me in succession, and that is why I figured freelancing was a far more ‘stable’ career path. As indeed it has proven to be. But the collapse of an employer or even a complete area of work can happen anytime, as I had to remember only weeks ago when a publishing project that was meant to run for the next six months was shut down unexpectedly. It is always a shock, but it is a matter of picking yourself up and figuring out what you want to do and where the opportunities are. That is something I worked out years ago was one of the rules of engagement of being in the media, and you do really need to be – either freelance or on staff – resilient to cope with it.