[00:00:34] – Frankie
Hello. You’re listening to the Doing It For The Kids podcast, where we swear a bit too much and talk a bit too fast about freelance life with kids in the mix. I’m Frankie and this is Steve.

[00:00:44] – Steve
Hello! Yes, each episode we take a question from the Doing It For The Kids community, do our best to answer it, but we start each episode by looking back at the last one. Last time we were talking about-,

[00:00:56] – Frankie
When to outsource. Out sauce… The sauce… The chilli. Sorry.

Yes, when to outsource! When do you know when it’s the right time to outsource?

[00:01:09] – Steve
Oh, yes, that’s right. But it was talking about outsourcing PR and things, wasn’t it?

[00:01:14] – Frankie
That was one of the things on the list, but we talked a lot about PR. Yeah.

[00:01:17] – Steve
Okay, that makes sense because Claire Foss says,

“I can help with this one. I am a PR agency and I work with other businesses, though in a different space to the person posting this question. The biggest pitfall, which I see again and again, is seeing the coverage…”

I guess like getting in magazines and stuff?

“…as the goal and not linking what you’re doing strongly enough back to your business goals.

For example, people often come and tell me they want five pieces of coverage a month, or people suggest they need X pieces of content or Y posts on LinkedIn. Instead, you need to look at where your business is going, where you are aiming to be in 12 to 18 months, and what wins would get you there. So for some businesses, the goal might be a national listing or a specific type of client that they know is profitable or to hire the right team because they’re growing really fast. This is the real brief and the thing you need any PR agency to answer. You don’t want them to tell you that they can get 10 pieces of coverage in a month. You want them to tell you how they’re going to use the tools they have to get to the goals you want.”

[00:02:28] – Frankie
Harriette Wade-West says,

“As a VA, I obviously think a bit about when is the right time for people to outsource, as that’s where my business comes from. I appreciate that marketing is a little different because of the ‘speculate to accumulate’ aspect of it. But for things that you are currently doing yourself, I find it helpful to remember that you are already paying for this work at your own hourly rate.

With this in mind, and on a very basic, purely monetary level, I consider two questions helpful in deciding whether it’s time to outsource:

1) Is there someone who could do this at a lower hourly rate than me? Or a specialist who, even at the same or higher rate, could do it more efficiently or to a higher standard than I can?

3) Is there potential billable work that I could be doing instead, either in the form of new clients or more work for existing ones?

I think we start out doing everything in our own businesses because the answer to the second question is no. If we’re not fully booked yet or are still building a client base or pipeline, then it makes sense to do certain things ourselves rather than pay somebody else to do it and then sit there twiddling our thumbs with no additional money coming in to cover it. But we need to remember to revisit this question down the line and on a semi-regular basis.”

[00:08:11] – Steve
Alright. This week’s question comes from Detective Don Byrne. They say,

“Hi, Frankie and Steve.

I have a childcare question for you…

With our first born, we never considered putting her in nursery. I reduced my hours at my employed job and my partner and I shared looking after her by working alternate days. This time around, I’m self-employed, and with my partner now working five days a week, I’m only able to work after 4pm, which is really hard.

I’m getting work done, but it’s incredibly difficult to get motivated to work at that time. Our youngest is now two and therefore qualifies for the 15 free hours a week. But we both feel incredibly guilty about thinking of using a nursery, even for a couple of afternoons a week. I personally feel like I’m being selfish because we’re making it work at the moment without formal childcare, and the number one reason we’d put him in a nursery would be so I can work during the day a bit more.

So can I have your pros and cons for using paid-for childcare when you’re in a situation like mine, when you don’t need to?

Thank you, Detective Don Byrne.”

[00:09:20] – Frankie
I feel there is a lot going on in this question, and we haven’t had a question like this for a long time. You, Don, are feeling the weight of responsibility of being ‘the flexible parent’. Like, whether your partner is putting this pressure on you or not, I don’t know. But you were clearly like, “I can work from four o’clock in the afternoon. I have the power and flexibility to do that. Therefore, I don’t ‘need’ (in inverted commas) to pay for childcare because I can make it work in this way.” Yeah. Yes Don, you can. But is it destroying you?

Like, I know I could not work every day from 4pm till I don’t know what… 8pm? I don’t even know how long that day lasts. Does it go on into the evening? Yeah, I know for a fact that would not work for me, both in terms of my productivity to get the job done, but also my overall exhaustion levels, mental health… Like, no.

And we’ve talked in other episodes about recognising when you personally have the most productive windows of the day. So maybe if you are one of these people that is a night owl or like-, I know there are a lot of people who talk about the 3pm slump, and how they actually get into their work at that time. So maybe that works in that scenario?

For me personally, it’s like 9am till 11am — boom. Get it all done. And then after that, it’s just downhill. If I had to start at 4pm, it would just be a total sh*t show, basically. Yeah.

So Don doesn’t say exactly how that’s working. What does he say…

[00:10:52] – Steve
He says it starts for 4pm. It’s really hard. “I’m getting work done, but it’s incredibly difficult”. And I mean, here’s an opportunity for you not to have to do that.

[00:11:04] – Frankie
But that’s it. I feel like Don feels like he should be doing that because that’s the ‘right’ thing for the family. It’s double-fold though, isn’t it? Maybe that’s the ‘right’ thing for the family, as in… They’re saving money by him working in that way. But then also, there’s guilt about handing the child over to somebody else. Because there’s guilt about doing that — full stop. We all have some level of guilt about paying for childcare. But then there’s even more guilt because they didn’t do it with their first born. So it’s like, “Oh, we managed not to do it the first time around”. So, you know, there’s clearly an element of that going on. And as a second born child in my family, I’d like to tell you, Don — that it’s okay. Like, there’s no pictures of me! I survived!

[00:11:45] – Steve
Yeah, I mean, look, you’re asking our opinion? The big caveat is, of course, every family, every child, every parent, every situation is different. I don’t think for a start, that you should feel any guilt ever. Personally, anyway, I feel like it’s no bad thing for a kid to go into childcare. If you want to look at it from that side of things. As in… it’s a different experience. Also when they go to school, that’s what’s going to happen. So it starts to prepare them — the experience of hanging out with other children, having other people in charge of them, blah, blah, blah. Also, you are paying for it. I mean, I know it’s ‘free’ childcare, but we’re all paying so that you can take that piece of free childcare.

[00:12:28] – Frankie
‘Paying’ in inverted commas.

[00:12:30] – Steve
You know. Personally, I’d like to see you use it.

[00:12:33] – Frankie
Well, that is my underlying feeling ultimately — is if he wants to use it, he should use it. But also I completely relate to all of the things that he is talking about here. But you’re right — in terms of the guilt and stuff. In my experience, I found those really early preschool years incredibly hard. I was very, very tired and had no energy to do much, to be honest. And so paying somebody to look after my child meant that my child was doing stuff that I would just never do at home, like crafting and baking. But yeah, you’re not just paying for somebody to look after your child. You’re also paying for learning experiences and the fun stuff and the fun environment they’re in; all the toys that they have access to. And as you said, all the social side of it as well — hanging out with other kids, getting ready for school… picking up all the bugs!

[00:13:23] – Steve
Yeah, well, that’s an interesting side to this as well, because actually, at the moment, you know that at 4pm, you’re going to be able to work, right? Whatever happens, presumably your partner has come home, they’re now looking after the child, you go off to work. But when you put your kid into any form of childcare, you assume in your head that means you’re going to be able to work. And so your mind starts to plan for it and want it and yada, yada. But half the time they are sick, or the place is closed, or it’s tied into school holidays. And suddenly, yeah-, and I felt this — that can lead to a frustration. There might resentment because you thought you were going to be working and then actually you can’t. So in a weird perverse way, I wonder whether it’s better to be in control and think, “okay, I will be working from 4pm and I can just enjoy or make the most of the day that I have”, rather than that dropping a kid off two hours later, coming back to pick them up and then feeling frustrated because you never got anything done in between.

[00:14:41] – Frankie
Yeah. And it does sound like the dynamic here means that it’s going to fall on you if the kid isn’t in a nursery for whatever reason.

[00:14:48] – Steve
Here’s another pro — if you’re maybe stealing a couple of hours during the day to actually work while that child is in childcare, then what if you don’t work that evening for those 2 hours? What’s that going to feel like? You’re going to be spending more time with the family in a different way.

[00:15:06] – Frankie
You get to do bedtime! Ha!

[00:15:07] – Steve
Is that what you want?

[00:15:08] – Frankie
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:09] – Steve
Also, are you somebody who is super productive once you get in the role? I know you say that it’s difficult to get motivated, but once you’re underway, do you actually find yourself ticking off lots of stuff? Is that open-ended hours at the end of the day going to be more productive for you than a couple of hours of a morning or an afternoon?

[00:15:31] – Frankie
Yeah, he does say that, doesn’t he? “A couple of afternoons a week”. I don’t know how far this nursery is from where they live, but like, an afternoon at a nursery can be an incredibly short amount of time. By the time you’ve dropped them there, come home, got into the zone, done some stuff, and then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about whether a half-day is even worth it. Would it be better to do longer days if you are going to send them to a nursery? I don’t know. Again, very personal. Think about weighing up the pros and cons of that.

[00:16:02] – Steve
And sometimes that might be dictated by the nursery when it comes to cashing in those free coupons that they have to cash in.

[00:16:09] – Frankie
Yeah, also true.

[00:16:10] – Steve
If you’re ever paying for childcare, I suppose you want to know that you’re earning enough to cover that. You know, like, there’s a reason why you’re doing it from that point of view as well. But if anything, you might find that has a pro to your pricing as well because you might think, “Actually, I’m going to put this up a little bit in order to make sure I’m covering that!”

[00:16:32] – Frankie
But also, <insert speech here> about how, again, as the flexible parent, you covering the cost of that childcare is not on you. It’s not just that the childcare facilitates you to work, that childcare is facilitating you as a family unit to earn. As far as I can tell, the childcare cost falls to both parents (assuming there are two parents at play here). That is a joint expense.

You know, so many freelancers are deducting-, literally, this is how the maths in their mind works! They’re deducting the childcare costs out of their income to work out whether or not it’s worth signing up for. I’m sorry but no — it should be 50% of the childcare cost, if you’re going to do it that way. 50% of the childcare cost is being deducted, if you want, from your income because the other half is being covered by your partner who also has to go to work.

Like, if you weren’t looking after that child, how would your partner go to work? They wouldn’t.

The formal, paid-for childcare is a family expense. It does not fall to you as the freelancer in this dynamic. It just doesn’t. And too many freelancers use that as a means to — and this question is a classic example! — as a means to guilt trip themselves into not signing up for childcare and working crazy hours and earning not very much money because they have no time.

Basically, I’m a big advocate of formal childcare. And we give ourselves a lot of barriers and a lot of bullsh*t about how it falls on us. It’s ‘our responsibility’ because we’re the ones that’s usually doing that job, and therefore it falls on us to arrange it, pay for it, deal with it when it goes wrong… Like, no, there is somebody else involved in raising this child. And it is a group effort — including the cost and logistics of managing childcare.