It’s my 2-year self-employmentversary!

I’ve written two of these reflective posts already, one at 6-months and the other the 1-year mark. I find it both useful and motivating to see how my journey as a business owner is panning out so far.

Let’s start with some of the positives of my second year…

1.       I’ve seen my business grow rapidly.
In my first year of self-employment, I had about a 70-30 split in terms of contracting and freelance. Contracting was my main source of income, and I was slowly building up my freelance client base. This past year however has seen this do a complete 180, with around 90% of my income and work having come from freelancing. It was this that then led me to make the pretty massive decision to switch to a limited company and become VAT registered, but more on

that later!

2.       I’ve grown in confidence and found my rhythm.
When I first started out, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I didn’t know how to price my work, said yes to pretty much everything that came my way and massively overworked myself. Now I am much more confident in valuing my services and as a professional in general. I feel able to go into new client calls with assurance that I can competently describe the services I provide and the value my skills have. I definitely say no now and have had to have some pretty uncomfortable conversations this year, again we’ll get on to that in a minute.

I have also begun to find a comfortable working pattern for myself and have a good understanding of the amount of work I can take on at one time. Don’t get me wrong, this is still very much a work in progress, and I am guilty of taking on too much sometimes! But I’ve started to enjoy the flexibility I have a little more and even started taking a Friday off when entering quieter periods.

3.       I’ve created some of my best work ever.

This past year has been the one for pushing my creativity and skills to the limit. As a result, I have produced work that I am incredibly proud of, from personal projects like Restful Refreshments, to client projects such as a complex eLearning on Integrating AI, which really strengthened my instructional design. I feel like I’ve not only strengthened and demonstrated my niche as a professional this year, but I’ve also found a good balance when combining my three skillsets to create digital learning that can be beautiful, accessible, engaging and cost effective.

4.       I pushed myself out of my comfort zone.

I held my first ever Rise training session! Training delivery does not come naturally to me at all, so I was super nervous. But I love to share my knowledge and knew whilst it would be nerve-wracking, it was good professional development for myself. I won’t be switching to be a facilitator any time soon but do now feel slightly more comfortable taking opportunities that require me to lead a session, or public speak.

5.       I’ve met and formed relationships with some lovely people and maintained existing ones too.

Although mostly virtual, I have cemented some fab working relationships with new and existing clients and fellow professionals. Sadly, I’ve had to let some go, or say no to certain opportunities, but this has been all part of the learning process in curating people and companies I genuinely want to work with and feel aligned too.

It feels amazing to write that all down and celebrate the wins this year has brought. So now let’s move on to the challenges, growth opportunities if you will.

1.       Money, money, money.

I have spent a lot of time this past year chasing invoices. I knew it would happen to me at some point and a lot of other freelancers have experienced similar situations of not being paid. Being owed a significant amount of money and being ghosted by the company that owes it to you is not ideal and took a lot of my mental energy away from other things.

The situation was eventually resolved and I’m proud of how I handled it. I was firm, held a boundary and didn’t name and shame the company (trust me I really really wanted too!). The people pleaser in me was firmly dead and buried after this situation!

2.       Misaligned expectations.

I’ve had a couple of instances this year where my client’s expectations and how I’d perceived the work I was tasked to do, have not aligned. I’m not going to lie this always gives me the punch in the gut type of feeling. I pride myself on the quality of work I produce, so when someone is less than really happy with it, it hits me hard. What I came to realise from this is that communication is often the catalyst in these situations occurring. In one instance it was inconsistent and unclear communication from a client and the other myself not clarifying what was expected of me from the outset.

3.       Keeping up with the Kardashians? Nope just myself.

Whilst I’ve found a bit of balance in terms of the workload I take on, I have found it challenging to maintain my presence on social media. LinkedIn has had a huge impact in my business growing the way it has, so I do feel a constant pressure to maintain my visibility on the platform. However, creating social content can be soooo time consuming!! I posted so much in the early days that I soon realised I could not keep up at the same pace and had to scale it back to one or two posts a week. I also only want to post what feels genuine or authentic, which can often mean not being able to schedule things that far in advance.

Only in the past month or so have I really found a better rhythm with this and I’ve been really strict with myself that I only allocate a small portion of my working month to social posts.

4.       HMRC love to give me migraines.

It was this past year that I finally got myself an accountant! This felt like a real big girl step in my self-employment career, mainly because I needed the accountant to help me with my VAT application. I’m so bloody grateful that things are going well enough to have to register for VAT, but jeeez was it stressful.

Due to the growth in the business my accountant suggested I become a limited company to help reduce my tax. I heard ‘less tax’ and thought absolutely! Little did I know at the time that sole trader and limited company are immensely different.

I went from earning the money, keeping some back for tax and paying myself as and when I please, to mountains of admin, having to categorise every penny that comes out of my business and suddenly having a PAYE system.

Don’t get me wrong, my accountant handles most of it for me, but when I was first presented with different tax schemes, talks of dividends and corporation tax, I did freak out a little bit. It was incredibly overwhelming and there were times where I questioned if I had made the wrong choice. That was until my ginormous tax bill from HMRC came through in May and I realised it definitely was the right decision.

5.       Let it go, let it go…

As I alluded to above, unfortunately this year I’ve had to cut ties with certain clients and have had to have some tricky conversations. Now I will preface this by saying I am very privileged to be able to choose who I work with. I know in my early days this was not an option, I had to take the business at it came.

I remember one particularly awkward conversation last year with a potential client. To be honest we weren’t vibing from the outset and when it came to pricing, I told her my day rate and was met with, ‘what? Per day!?’ The look on her face was pretty funny, but I knew it wasn’t a relationship that was going to progress.

I also had another situation in which a client wasn’t able to reach me. At the time I was not only having email issues, but she was trying to contact me via an email address that had been set-up for me, for working within their organisation. At this point we had no work together planned; I was simply ‘on the books.’ Naturally as the emails were not coming through to my main business account, I hadn’t seen them. She had been trying to contact me about a potential project and wasn’t impressed that I had missed them.

I had two ways to play this, either apologise profusely and lay the blame on me, or hold a boundary. I chose the latter. I did apologise that I had missed the emails, but I put a boundary in place that all new business or collaboration opportunities must come via my main business email. I have around 5 or 6 different addresses for various organisations and only check these individually when I am actively working with that organisation.

This was really uncomfy for the people pleaser in me, but I realised that how I handled the situation would set precedent for how the relationship progressed and how my boundaries would be respected. I haven’t heard from her since, but I feel at peace with how I left things.

This past year has massively challenged the perfectionist, people pleasing side of me. I’ve certainly realised that whilst it is important to be ‘easy to work with’, respect works both ways and if I give off the impression that I won’t push back, people will walk all over me.

So perhaps most importantly, what have I learned?

1.       You’re going to fuck up Emma, handle it with grace and move on.

I’ve messed up a couple of times this year and my brain haaaaattteeesss it. If I fail at something that’s just for me, for example I try something for a personal project and it doesn’t work, then I just go meh and move on. But when it’s for a client project, I have the tendency to obsess over little mistakes, and my brain will immediately go down the imposter syndrome route of, ‘what if they think I’m shit at my job?!!’ I’ve learned to breathe, take accountability and remind myself that I am good at my job, I’m just human and everyone messes up sometimes.

I’ve also found that being present to support in fixing the mistake I’ve made, always helps put my mind at ease.

2.       Communication really can be the catalyst between things going well and it becoming a dumpster fire.
This may seem really obvious, but when you’re forming a new working relationship together it can be easy to fall into the trap of assuming you know how they work and vice versa. I’ve learned that even though the ‘job’ may be the same, different organisations or individuals may have different ideas as to what’s expected at each point, or how often they expect you to communicate with them. If this isn’t outlined at the start of the project, it can cause problems further down the line. Even if it seems a bit pedantic to have it all in writing, it can save you awkward conversations, or the ‘but I swear you said…’ arguments.

3.       Ask all the questions. No one is going to think you’re stupid.
If there’s one very big positive that has come from me switching to a limited company, it’s that I had to get over my pride. I can sometimes be guilty of not asking questions for fear of looking stupid or incompetent. But when I was thrown into a world of taxes, accounts and finance speak, in which I couldn’t simply Google the answer, I realised very quickly I would have to get used to not knowing things. At first, I was avoiding emailing my accountant because I felt like my questions were stupid and surely, I should know these things? But after a minor freak out, I found myself getting super stressed about things I didn’t need to be. Now I practically have my accountant on speed dial, I mean that’s what I pay her for right?

This links in with my point around communication. I’ve learned to just ask the question, it’s better to get clarification than make a silly, preventable mistake. Asking questions can also lead to valuable discussions and idea generation too.

4.       It’s okay not to love it all the time.

When I first started out, I kinda felt like I couldn’t moan about being self-employed. I mean here I was doing a job I love, with consistent work, flexibility etc, what did I have to moan about? Scrolling through LinkedIn and seeing others in my position just a year or so prior, desperately trying to find their next role, acted as a reminder of how fortunate I am to have made this work for me.

But like with any job it is normal not to love everything about it. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but there were points where I thought ‘do I really want to do this?’ When I had deadline after deadline, taxes to keep on top of, a house to run etc. etc. I’ve realised both feelings can be possible at once, I can love my job and the perks that come with it, as well as finding it difficult sometimes and wanting a break.  Usually these negative, or imposter syndrome feelings come when I’m on the brink of burnout. It’s not that I don’t like being self-employed, I just need a week off to reset.

I do hope that by sharing both the positives and challenges with being self-employed, it helps others to paint a realistic picture and make an informed decision as to whether it is the right move for them.

5.       Saying ‘no not at the moment’ doesn’t mean never.

A couple of times in the past year I’ve nearly catapulted myself into burnout by taking on too much at once. Not necessarily because I can’t say no, but mainly through fear the potential client may not come back to me again.

I’ve since found this isn’t always the case. I’ve had to turn down a couple of projects because of availability, but in both instances the client has been in contact a couple of months later or asked for my future availability to note into their diary.

I will always try and squeeze people in where I can, especially if they’re one of my frequent flyers. But I’ve realised if people value my services, they will return and use me at a later date, even if they find an alternative for the project I am unavailable for. It’s better to say no, than say yes and do a shoddy job, because that’s a guaranteed way to ensure they never come back to you!!

And there we go! As I say every time, I’m just so grateful to still be here two years later. To be still growing both as a business and a person and thank you to everyone that supports me, that trusts me with their projects and interacts with my social posts. You are the best! Here’s to another year.