I’ve chosen not to write weeknotes all summer. Not because I’ve been sunning myself on the beach, sadly. It’s been a busy summer of work and not much else (hence writing this on a Saturday…). Things are starting to settle down a bit now, and September is a very good time for fresh starts, so I’m back again.
Last week, I was thinking about:
Fractional content leadership and whether it’s a service I want to offer
I’m gradually tapering off a long-term project at the moment. It’s made me think about fractional content leadership, and if it should be part of my service offering and how I market myself. It wasn’t the brief for the project, but it definitely felt like I was filling that gap at points.
I can see advantages to working this way — a long-term, part-time gig with the right client would ease a lot of my self-employed angst. (Which is giving me a kicking at the moment – see rest of post). I can also see advantages for clients:
- Getting content in order and proving the case for investing in a full-time, permanent member of staff.
- Support for organisations that don’t need a full-time head of content, but do need some guidance.
- Support through a lengthy project like a website redesign
Self-employed angst and being ghosted by potential clients
I keep track of my new business pipeline: what I won, what I lost, what I passed on, time from inquiry to decision, and more. This year I’ve had to add a new category: ghosted.
I have been ghosted by so many potential clients, and I’m hearing that it’s happening to lots of other agencies and self-employed people too. I totally understand when plans change, budgets change, or it gets hard to make a decision. I take no offence at any of those things — it’s part of business. But not replying after we’ve had a get to know you call/calls, I’ve sent a proposal, and then follow-up emails, etc? I struggle with that. I would so much rather get a rejection than silence. (I had a delightful rejection email from one potential client – they gave me lovely feedback, explained why they couldn’t move on with the project, and while it was disappointing, it actually left me feeling pretty good.)
It’s a big part of why I’m experiencing an episode of self-employed angst. I currently have no work booked in after October, and the pipeline is pretty empty. (So please do get in touch if you need help!) On the other hand, I haven’t had a break all summer — I’ve only had about 10 days off so far this year — so a long break might be nice.
The other part of the angst is about being really, really busy but not feeling any financial benefits. I’ve had a long-term ambition of being able to afford my own office space. Somewhere perfect came up, but when I did the sums I realised the (pretty modest) extra cost would push me from being profitable to making a small loss. I hadn’t done a deep dive on my business costs for a while either. It was pretty sobering to realise that I need to earn £2000 for every £1000 I want to take home, because of tax and business costs. There are good reasons why my profit margin sucks so much, but it’s still something I’m going to work on improving over the next year.
Reading/watching/listening to
I watched the Blur documentary, To The End. Blur were my favourite band from when I was 10 to 16 (Modern Life is Rubbish to 13). So it made me really happy to hear the music that soundtracked those years.
I’ve been listening to Blur a lot since then, too. Top tracks:
- For Tomorrow
- This is a Low
- To the End
- Beetlebum
- Essex Dogs
- Tender
- Coffee and TV
- The Narcissist
I really enjoyed Matthew Stasoff’s Social Signals deck about the state of social in 2024.
