Starting Out

Going freelance: Four ways to get your family to support your freelancing career

Choosing to switch from full-time to freelancing can be a tough decision and the change will go a lot smoother if you have the help and support of those closest to you. Freelance Advisor, Coach and Consultant Dianne Bown-Wilson continues her series of articles on freelance career development issues for freelancers and contractors.

Nearest and Dearest – Supporters or Saboteurs?

If you’re thinking of embarking on a freelance career or have just started out, there may be one important area you haven’t addressed. What’s that? Look behind you! Yes, the issue of keeping the peace with your nearest and dearest (N&Ds) whether that’s your partner, parents, siblings, children, or friends. Individually and together they can make a huge difference to your ongoing success. It all depends on whether or not they operate as supporters or saboteurs.

Supporters, as you would expect, provide practical, emotional, and financial assistance – all that you need to help you out and keep you going, particularly when times get tough. Saboteurs do just the opposite. Whether or not they intend to, they can sabotage and ultimately undermine your efforts, willpower, and confidence through distracting you, making unreasonable demands and failing to accommodate the needs of your job.

How can this be when these are the people who love you?

As with many things in life, the answer often comes down to simple lack of communication. Tackle it through addressing the following four points and you will avoid much of the conflict and stress that can arise. If you’re suffering already, it should help improve matters immediately.

Read on for advice on getting your family’s full support for your freelance career…

Help them understand what you do and why

Some N&Ds can only relate to work in terms of what they do themselves, or as straightforward, work-for-someone-else employment. Being self-employed or a contract worker, probably working from home, just doesn’t add up to a proper job as far as they’re concerned. Unless you take time to explain to them clearly and frequently what you do, how you do it and why you do it, they’ll probably never accept that your job is anything more than a glorified hobby. As they see it you can be interrupted, distracted or taken advantage of whenever they feel like it. After all, as you haven’t got much else to do you should be grateful.

Agree working hours

Many people talk in broad brush terms when they discuss the prospect of going freelance with their N&Ds. Finance, security, fulfilment – stuff like that. Often, perhaps because they don’t realise it themselves at the start, they fail to talk about working hours, job commitments and how this might fit in with everyone else. Flexibility is both strength and a weakness of freelancing. It means that you can work through the night or weekends, or start at noon and stop at midnight. And sometimes you’ll have to whether or not you want to. No problem unless those around you have structured, conventional working hours to which they expect you to adhere. Communication and constant compromise is the only way forward.

Negotiate high days and holidays

As with working hours, the issue of holidays also can be a minefield. How can you convince your N&Ds that leaving your clients to go off on a last minute jolly is no longer an option? How do you balance N&Ds’ needs for normal social participation with your needs for the same – but within the context of unpredictable work flow and clients who may expect you to be on call 24/7? Planning and good communication systems are key. Thankfully mobile technology allows us to do many things from most places in the world – so you can keep in touch with clients if nothing else – as long as you spell it out to your N&Ds that this is what you are going to have to do. (A further minefield for older freelancers is that of retirement: how can you keep working if your partner wants to retire? – watch this space for a future article).

Avoid becoming a childminder, pet-sitter or concierge

A final area of sabotage from your N&Ds can be the extent to which they expect you to act as general housekeeper, errand-runner and dogsbody simply because you’re at home whereas they are at work! Of course, kids, pets and delivery/repair people being what they are, it may well make good sense for you to do all these things during the day. But if you’re to have a successful career and keep your sanity you are going to have to negotiate consistent and permanent payment in return. Adjustment to working hours may be a solution, for example working in the evening as part of your normal “day”. Or trading chores with the N&Ds that you would otherwise have to do, such as supermarket shopping or dropping off dry cleaning.

None of these are complex areas and there are no rules that will work for everyone. The route to avoiding conflict and ensuring camaraderie is to work out, with them, what best suits your N&Ds and you.