This week I added another first to my life experiences: public speaking. (well if you don't count hosting my primary school leaving assembly and a very blurry memory of a best man's speech) And I think I liked it.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my good friend Rachel Service of Happiness Concierge asked me to join her to co-host a workshop on Communicating with clients as a freelancer. This was done through Freelance Australia, which is a great NGO which helps freelancers connect with all the people and info they need. We have both been freelancing in our respective fields for over 5 years, and have industry experience going back far longer than that. Rachel comes from a PR background and I am obviously an animator, so our experiences gelled really well to give two perspectives and offer a broad spectrum of freelancing info and feedback for the group.
I was so pleased by how keen everyone was to weigh in with their own experience and ask more about the topics we covered. Fortunately we had prepared for most of the topics that came up, and I surprised myself at how much I was able to draw on my own experience to help people out with prickly issues they were having in their freelance lives.
Some of the key take aways that people wanted to hear more about included;
• Itemising invoices: It's not necessary when you are a one-person business providing a small skill set.
• Describing what You do when your skill set is multi-specialised: Simplify your description to the main skill you want to sell, or the skill they most require, then you can pull out your other talents later as awesome value adds.
• Setting rates as a freelancer: There is no hard and fast rule, but you must be confident to demand a lot more as a freelancer because you are the expert that they needed to bring in to get the job done. You are also a business with overheads and taxes and nobody is paying you leave, sick days or super, so all these should factor into your rate.
We also got into the pros and cons of Project Fees vs. Day Rates and we talked about balancing freelance work with other paid work or business ventures. It was also great see multiple breakthroughs where people were able to recognise that their cumulative experience adds up to more than what they gave themselves credit for.
We got a great turnout, and the workshop is definitely something we will be bringing back to Melbourne and Sydney in the coming months (Let us know if you want this in a town near you!) We have already started building these and many more new topics into the next workshop and I can't wait to take to the stage again soon!
To learn more about this and other workshops, check out http://www.happinessconcierge.com.au/