The Perils of Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket …
When you first take that huge step into starting your own business, the thought of having a reliable, trustworthy, dependable client is very much a godsend. You are setting off into the unknown and any amount of security is a welcome one. This is, of course, very true. And if you are in that lucky position of having your client provide projects/custom from day one of your new venture, that’s a good place to be. But what happens when that client expects more and more of you, to the point that you haven’t the time or resources to source other work? This blog post is a personal story about how that happened to me, and why it’s really important to stay in charge of your own business…
The story starts back in 1999 when I took the decision to leave a fantastic media job in the City of London to start anew as a self-employed writer/editor in Cardiff. The first couple of years were difficult – saying yes to any project that came my way, just so that I could pay my mortgage. But then a successful application for a freelance writer that was listed on a journalist website guaranteed me two short articles each month – not a huge income, but the first ‘steady’ amount I’d had to date. It was for a business and technology publisher and soon afterwards more of their titles were offering me similar ongoing article quotas. Over the following 18 months I went from working ‘occasionally’ to having to schedule my time to meet the growing number of deadlines I had to meet. Demand from this company kept growing – I even had my husband Huw help me with research in the evenings when he got home from work! As a freelancer you are told to never say ‘no’ to any offer of work, so I said ‘yes’ to it all.
Around this time the company that Huw worked for closed down and he found himself out of work. So while looking for new employment, he joined me …. 8 years on he is still self-employed; because even with the two of us, the demand for work carried on growing from this same company – but now we were providing editorial for their websites as well as print publications. With two of us working around the clock, we even employed friends as researchers! Bearing in mind that our overheads were virtually nil, as it was just us on our computers typing, we billed this client between £9,000 and £14,000 each month. It took its toll on us, as we couldn’t take any time off, but it was really good money, and we felt blessed that we were doing so well. At the back of our minds though we did worry about only having one client…
In 2007, after working for this client for 4 years, the telephone call we dreaded (and didn’t, at that time, expect) came. The company had been sold overseas. All editorial was being moved to the Middle East and from that day onwards our services would no longer be required. BAM …. All gone. A 5 minute telephone call ended our freelance life as we had known it. We had no other clients to fall back on.
Thankfully, we had ‘stockpiled’ some of our profits, so we had a cushion of money to keep us afloat while we started all over again. But this time it was 100 times harder. The recession had kicked in and there were many more freelancers wanting the same projects as us – and this time around we had a young family to support. Pitching for work became frustrating as there was always someone prepared to undercut your prices even though you had reduced them significantly. It became demoralising and three years on we had made little impact into rebuilding our freelance business. After 11 years, the decision was taken for us to start afresh with new career ideas. My husband worked short-term contracts with medical communications companies, while I worked from home looking after our two young children while setting up my website, WowThankYou. In September, Huw starts Teacher Training, going back to being the academic Chemist he was when I met him. On the same day my youngest child will start Primary School full-time. So my working life seems to have gone full circle. When I met my husband I was just starting out as self-employed, and soon afterwards he joined me, we had our two children and we are always at home – the house is never empty. In September that all changes! I’m back to spending my days alone, with my laptop, doing everything I can to make a success of my business. I have turned my back on freelance writing now – in honesty I never truly felt in control of it, and there was no stability; it was always ‘all’ or ‘nothing’. With WowThankYou I have a clear vision of where we’re going and what we want to achieve. It’s the job that I feel comfortable doing – I can finally set myself a healthy working routine, for the first time in 12 years!
So the moral of this story is just to keep a clear head and do all you can to spread your work around several clients. I believe there are new rules now that prevent a company from having freelancers that do not have other clients, because the taxman doesn’t consider you self-employed if you work solely for a single business as you are more of an employee in their eyes. That never affected us as it came into force after our ‘crash’, but you should look into this further (I’m no expert).
Although we’re happy with our future plans, our freelance writing business collapsed because we allowed a single company to overwhelm us with work. We saw money signs and said yes to everything even though deep down we knew we were playing a dangerous game – everyone was telling us to not be so reliant on them. We ignored them. It came back to bite us. Please, don’t put yourselves in that position. Have lots of clients, then if you need to part company with one, there are others to keep you afloat. It’s common sense really, but we ignored it…
A lot of mums outside the nursery gates are dreading September when their little ones start school full-time. I feel differently – my son loves nursery and he’ll love school and I’ve been lucky enough to spend every day with him since he was born. He’s starting school with his friends and he’ll have a fantastic time. But I’m looking forward to being ‘me’ again – I love being ‘mummy’, but I love being just Tracey too. It’s a whole new chapter for me!
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