Ask Per My Last
Today, I’m piloting a new series: Ask Per My Last, an advice column based on (anonymized versions) of questions I get asked a lot these days. Let me know what you think of the format, and submit your own questions here.
And now, without further ado, Letter #1:
Dear Per My Last,
I’ve gotten a few offers to help friends and former coworkers with their communications and marketing strategy, but I still have a full-time job. Should I do it? What do I need to be mindful of?
Sincerely,
bb freelancer
Dear bb freelancer,
Congrats! Your brand is strong and we love to see it. A few things to consider as you embark on this journey:
Do you WANT to do it? You have a full-time job, so you have a salary and benefits and responsibilities a’plenty. What will you get from freelancing? This might be money for a trip or a home renovation, the opportunity to work on projects outside the scope of your day job, or building a freelance reputation in advance of leaving your full-time job. The reason to get clear on your why is that this clarity will allow you to set better boundaries with your clients.
Are you ALLOWED to do it? Some jobs don’t allow you to take on outside work. Others do, with caveats like: you can’t work for competitors or do work similar to what you do in your full-time role. You might also have to get advance permission. Check your employee handbook and any documents you signed when joining. If you’re not allowed to take on freelance work, do not pass go. (Or do and keep it on the DL, I’m not in charge of you!)
What KIND of work do you want to do? I mean this both in the sense of the substance of your freelancing (are you doing content marketing? executive comms? go-to-market strategy?) and the structure of your engagements (aka how you get paid). Note what you call your engagement doesn’t really matter, and people may use these terms differently; this is just a framework for thinking through different ways of working with clients.
Advisory/consulting. You’re doing strategy work. You’re a gut check for your approach on specific issues. You’re providing very little “hands-on-keyboard” time.
Fractional. You’re doing the work of a full-time employee—meaning a mix of strategy and execution—but for less-than-full-time hours. (This would, I imagine, be harder to do while working full-time elsewhere.)
Contractor. You’re creating a specific work product for your client, often with very clear scope provided to you. In other words, you’re doing more execution than strategy.
HOW do you want to charge?
Hourly. A lot of fellow consultants have told me not to charge hourly. I actually think it can be a useful way to start out, though, because in the beginning you have no clue how long different tasks might take you and this ensures you get paid for your time.
By project/deliverable. If you’re creating content, like blog posts or videos, you might consider charging by deliverable to provide predictability for both you and the client. I recommend capping rounds of revision if you do this and charging hourly for any edits beyond that; otherwise you can get stuck on the merry-go-round of endless edits. You can also charge per project (e.g. “create new content strategy” or “get company through layoffs”). The benefit here is that as you get better at the thing, you do it faster and thus make more money in less time.
Monthly retainer. This is what it sounds like, although you can do this one of two ways: with uncapped hours (in which case, get really clear on what is and is not in your scope) or capped hours (e.g. 5 hours/week). I like the predictability of capped hours but do uncapped for clients with less predictable needs (intermittent crises, elections—for me that’s the fun stuff).
HOW MUCH do you want to charge? There are a lot of ways to go about this. How much will the market bear (aka what’s the most you can charge)? What’s “market rate” (the average rate people are willing to pay)? What do you want to make? Remember: If you’re freelancing on the side of a full-time job, you don’t need the money, so this all comes back to your why. If you want to get exposure to new areas or help out a friend, you might charge a little less. If you’re in this to buy a house or you value your free time highly, you might charge more to set a higher barrier to entry. And you can have different rates for different clients.
Also: talk to people in the industry you work in to get a sense of market rate. I’ve found some anonymized survey data for my own field, but frankly it always averages out to a number lower than I think is reasonable. Nothing has been as valuable as what people have told me one-on-one.
Personally, I set my rate by working backward from my ideal annual salary. My inputs are: I want to make a X a year, I take Y weeks of PTO, and I spend Z hours a week on client-facing work (note: Z will not be 40 if you work a 40-hour week, because business development and general admin aren’t “billable” time). X / Y / Z = effective hourly rate. This is roughly what your client work should even out to across clients, whether or not you actually charge hourly. This might not be your calculus if you’re freelancing on the side, but it’s how I do it.
What are your BOUNDARIES? Can you take calls or do work during your full-time work hours? Will you be accessible on Slack or text? Think about what makes sense given the constraints of your full-time job and your life. If you need to work exclusively async and after-hours with hefty lead times, that’s totally valid—just be clear about that upfront so your client doesn’t ask you to, like, turn around a launch strategy in a day.
And remember: much like this very advice column, this is just an experiment! That’s the joy of a side gig. If you try it and don’t like it—great! Now you know (and have a few extra bucks). If you love it—also great! Maybe someday you’ll make it your full-time job or do it between full-time jobs or build out a long-term advisory business on the side of full-time work.
Good luck out there, bb.