[00:00:39] – 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.

[00:00:48] – Steve
Hello. Yes. Welcome to what can only be described as ‘another one’ then.

Episode what? 23? 23.

Where each week we take a different question from the Doing It For The Kids community. Do our best to answer it, but of course we also then ask for your comments, your experiences to share. Last time the question was-,

[00:01:12] – Frankie
Oh, raising your prices.

[00:01:12] – Steve
Oh, yes,

[00:01:13] – Frankie
It was about raising your prices. When to do it. How to do it.

[00:01:16] – Steve
As predicted, lots of people getting in touch. Thank you so much for your comments, especially because some of them are so long, so detailed. Go back, search the Doing It For The Kids community for episode 22 and read some of them. Laura Mingozzi-Marsh.

Laura said,

“When Frankie demanded we up our rates earlier this year-,”

[00:01:36] – Frankie
So for context, I did an Instagram post over the summer at some point — that was literally like, “Put your rates up!” End. It was a demand!

[00:01:43] – Steve
Well. Laura did it.

Laura continues,

“I upped my hourly and daily rates and not a single new client has batted an eyelid. If anything, I have bigger budget clients now because my rates better reflect my extensive experience. I have two regular clients who have always stated their budget and I knew that they couldn’t increase them. So with them, I explained that I would not up my rate, but would be hoping to complete their jobs more time-efficiently. It has totally worked! They now ensure that they keep their rounds of amends to a minimum so that they can pay me the same amount for fewer hours. So now I have more free time to do other work or just to spend with my kids having earned the same amount.”

How cool is that? I love that.

[00:02:26] – Frankie
It’s great, isn’t it? It’s a good approach to anyone that doesn’t want to pay you more because they can’t afford to. They have to compromise by therefore stepping up in terms of productivity and feedback and stuff. Genius!

[00:02:38] – Steve
Thank you, Laura.

[00:02:39] – Frankie
Lisa Clavering says,

“I think on the whole, we feel a lot more emotional about this than our clients. I took a very matter of fact approach. I started freelancing in April last year, and in February I emailed existing clients to say I’d be upping my fees in the new financial year. I explained that work already committed would remain at the same rate, but for new work from April, prices would increase. I explained this is to ‘reflect the experience that I have gained and the value and efficiency that I bring to my work. I hope you will agree that this is a fair and reasonable rate’. Obviously, my heart rate hit the roof when I hit send every time! But no one batted an eyelid. I think they valued me giving notice so they could factor into their planning.”

[00:03:15] – Steve
This is also good.

Kezia Hall says,

“I recently took up the price raising gauntlet and increased my prices — get this — by 40%!”

[00:03:24] – Frankie
Woo!!

[00:03:25] – Steve
Keisha continues,

“It was terrifying, but I realised that all the resistance to putting prices up is mainly just drama in my head, wasting my energy. I definitely feel better that my prices are more aligned with the value and energy I give out as a holistic nutritionist. I framed it as I hadn’t increased my prices for two years and have completed an expensive postgraduate degree since then. Plus, I have found weirdly over the years that the more I charge, the better physical results my clients get. Sounds so weird, but true. So I also see it as a better outcome for them in the long run.”

[00:04:01] – Frankie
Yes. I think you up your game, don’t you? Like, when you’re getting paid a higher rate, you have the luxury of time to do a really good job.

[00:04:10] – Steve
But I think as well — especially from a nutrition or exercise health point of view — if your client is paying more, then they are more invested in it, aren’t they?

[00:04:19] – Frankie
Yeah, yeah yeah.

[00:04:20] – Steve
They value it more.

[00:04:21] – Frankie
That’s a good point. It’s a running theme here — it makes the client step up as well in terms of their feedback or contribution or whatever. Yeah.

And Meg Hill says,

“I keep being told I need to raise my rates, but at the moment, I like being affordable. I don’t ever want people not to be able to access good quality support.”

[00:04:37] – Steve
What does Meg do?

[00:04:38] – Frankie
She does pregnancy and postnatal support. I imagine that’s something she feels passionately about and wants everybody to access. So that’s the other end of the spectrum, isn’t it? Not wanting to become inaccessible.

[00:06:38.270] – Frankie
This week’s question comes from Maia Swift, who is a copywriter, maiaswift.carbonmade.com

Maia says,

“I’ve been freelance for nearly four years now and although I have good months and rubbish months, on the whole it’s going well. In fact, to anyone just starting out as a freelancer, it would probably look like I’m making a success of it.

I work on interesting projects, my day rate is reasonably high and I rarely have to hunt for new leads. But in spite of that, I still rarely feel like I’m ‘successful’. Before having babies, I had a la-dee-da job title at a well respected agency and I guess part of me feels like I gave up on my career and any career progression when I left that job? I used to have objectives and win pitches and manage freelancers. So now I’m not sure how to make myself feel like I’m actually doing well. It doesn’t help that a lot of what I do is basically invisible. I don’t have a product to sell or a work Instagram feed or any of those things that might help create a sense of achievement.

Should I set objectives for myself or perhaps get a mentor? Do I need to be stricter about only taking on projects that feel more challenging than ones I’ve done before? Maybe I should post on LinkedIn about projects I’m working on? Cringe. Or should I redo my website and make a big song and dance about it?

Is there any other way to feel like you’re moving up instead of just along? I’m also aware that my lack of confidence when it comes to talking about being freelance doesn’t help. A lot of my friends who have proper jobs shout about their promotions and business trips and awards, blah, blah, blah. While I struggle to talk confidently about what I’m working on. Perhaps if I changed how I described my work, it would make me realise it’s going well at the same time as showing other people what I’ve achieved?

Thank you very much for a great podcast and group. It’s such a joy to know there are other people out there who understand. Maia.”

[00:08:08] – Steve
Oh, my gosh.

[00:08:11] – Frankie
Where do we start?

[00:08:14] – Steve
Let’s start with the very beginning of what she said, which is basically the fact that she doesn’t feel successful.

[00:08:23] – Frankie
Despite clearly sounding pretty successful!

[00:08:25] – Steve
Yeah. Which means what the hell is ‘successful’?

[00:08:28] – Frankie
I don’t know, Steve, what is successful?

[00:08:31] – Steve
You get to make the measure of your own success. The fact that you earn X amount of money is one level of success. The fact that you get to spend this amount of time with your kids is another level of success. Or you’re working with certain clients that you want to do, or like honestly, there’s so many different things that I could keep saying — but the fact is, they’re all individual to you.

[00:08:52] – Frankie
Yeah. And now you say that, a lot of her question is about how she feels she’s being defined by what other people are doing or what other people think of her. So, yeah, maybe what she needs to do is sit-, and this sounds so pretentious, I’m so sorry! But she needs to sit with herself. Like, what is it that she wants to be doing? What are her goals? What’s her ‘why’, Steve?

[00:09:15] – Steve
Yeah, it’s true, though!

[00:09:17] – Frankie
And looking at what she’s achieved in relation to that. Because who gives a shit what other people are doing or what they think about you? That’s not relevant. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know when she quit that corporate agency job, but if you’ve worked in that kind of setup for a long period of time, you’re used to working according to yearly appraisals. There are structures in place to help you look at your achievements. If those structures are taken away from you, that’s really disconcerting and you can lose all sense of yourself and what you’re doing. So maybe she needs to bring structure back in for herself as well? Whatever that is.

[00:09:53] – Steve
Which she kind of starts to answer herself, you know, when she says, “Do I need a mentor?” Well, strip away the word mentor for a second and go by the fact that you don’t feel successful because of these other people.

Get other people. Get new people. I’m not saying get rid of your old friends, but-,

[00:10:09] – Frankie
But maybe don’t talk to them about work so much?

[00:10:11] – Steve
But if you, for example, in the Doing It For The Kids community, or in a real life community near you or whatever, you know-, if you’re surrounding yourself with other people doing similar things to what you’re doing, then they’re going to have a different view of what success looks like in the first place.

[00:10:26] – Frankie
When I first started Doing It For The Kids, one of the first people I met and talked to was a lady called Laura Alvarado. Hello if she’s listening. She runs Tomato Tutors, which is like a really cool holistic learning program and space for kids. Anyway, one of the first things she ever said to me, or piece of advice she ever said to me was, “surround yourself with inspiring people and you’ll be fine” basically. I was like, YES. I’ve only been doing this for five minutes. And that was just like, oh my God, yes.

[00:10:54] – Steve
To go into that ‘mentor’ word. Yeah. I mean, why not get a mentor or a coach or a mastermind — like a group of people who get what you do. And at the very heart of that, a mentor like Frankie and I do. A co-mentor or a ‘business buddy’ or whatever you want to call it. It means that you can cheer each other on, you can hold each other accountable. And if you do want more structure to it, if you’ve been used to that kind of structure — and there’s nothing wrong with that at all! — then working more formally with some kind of coach might help you put that in place.

I bet you’re progressing forward anyway. But if you have this thing where you say that you want to ‘move up instead of along’; you actually want to feel like you’re hitting goals. Then start setting those goals and have people know that you’re setting them. I’m sure if you’ve worked in that corporate world, then you’ve been used to setting those SMART goals and things like that. Nothing wrong with the whole SMART thing. Do it with a coach, though, so that you’ve got that kind of framework in place and make it more formal. It’s totally doable. Or if you don’t want to pay for it — make it more informal with somebody else who’s also craving the same sort of thing.

[00:12:02] – Frankie
It rings true with some of the stuff we were talking about in a previous episode. I can’t remember what number it was, but the one about when real life gets in the way of business growth? Just the idea that we can be quite obsessive about growing — but do we need to grow? I know she doesn’t mention it in the question, but I know she works part-time around her kids. There’s only so much you can achieve in the hours that you’ve got. There’s only so much you can do at that stage. As we’ve talked about a million times — there are seasons in your life.

It sounds like she’s a person that’s prone to comparison, whether that’s the people that are working in PAYE jobs or whether that’s other freelancers that are supposedly doing bigger and better things than her. Maybe she needs to look at all the amazing stuff she’s doing now and just concentrate on that. There’s that classic Instagram motivational quote shit that’s like, “the person you were three years ago is looking at you now and thinks it’s unachievable!” or “wants to be where you are now”. Oh my God, that’s such a-,

[00:12:59] – Steve
Brilliant. The person I was three years ago is saying, “Wow, are you still wearing that hoodie?”

[00:13:05] – Frankie
But you know what I’m trying to say. It’s easy to get caught up in the everyday drudgery and you don’t realise how much you’ve already achieved and that actually — you’re not stagnant. You’ve actually achieved a lot in that time.

Maybe you need to do some self reflection? Whether that’s asking for testimonials from your clients or updating your website or-.

[00:13:25] – Steve
I think she says she doesn’t feel confident. Like, there’s a confidence kind of issue. But it sounds like you’re doing brilliantly to me. So you just need to look at the way you look at yourself, or the way you look at yourself with other people.

[00:13:38] – Frankie
I think a bit of external validation would be good. In this instance it sounds like she needs somebody to say, “Bloody hell, Maia! You’re doing great! Come on now”. Also, for the record, she is. I went to her website — and she’s got amazing clients. Her work looks fantastic.

[00:13:54] – Steve
In this particular instance, the way it’s being asked, I feel like the right kind of coach, business coach or life coach would genuinely-,

[00:14:03] – Frankie
Make a big difference!

[00:14:04] – Steve
Yeah. Because, I mean… we’ve both heard that has made a difference to lots of people.

[00:14:09] – Frankie
Yeah. We can’t speak from experience, to be fair.

[00:14:11] – Steve
No, but a really good coach helps you. They don’t tell you what to do, they just help you unpick it all and figure it all out and then they help you feel good about yourself when you’re heading in the right direction that you say you want to go in.

[00:14:25] – Frankie
I also think there’s another layer to this in that. So… it’s not my experience because I was freelance before I had children, but her life sounds very ‘classic’ in that she had this swanky agency life, winning the awards, presumably having a nice time etc. And then had children and left that world and is now building her own thing while becoming a parent, a mother. And that’s a massive identity shift on five or six different levels. I felt this and I was freelance! Like, you feel like you’re being left behind sometimes when you have kids and that’s such a horrible feeling.

But again — concentrate on the stuff you are doing. You’re working part-time and there’s only so much you can do in those hours. But you’re also being an amazing parent and growing a person and whatever else you’re doing. Like we touched on the other week — all that unpaid, unvalued work that parents do. You can get really… particularly if you’re surrounded by a group of friends that are going to these awards still living that same life that you were and you feel detached from them. That must feel quite alienating and difficult.

So, like Steve says — find some new people that understand the life you’re living now and the challenges that you’re up against and the realities of your life.

[00:15:45] – Steve
Yeah, obviously we all pick up various different friends at various different stages of our life, and then there’s family as well. But the more recent ones that I’ve made through going to freelance communities or meetups or like that entrepreneurial conference type thing — those people get what I’m going through far more. And in the case of Doing It For The Kids, even more so because of the whole layer of family. Those people have made so much more of a difference since kind of immersing myself and getting to know them more.

[00:16:15] – Frankie
And I spend most of my life now, yeah, talking about running a business and having children. That’s my day-to-day life now. And a lot of people that I know before I had children would probably think the kind of conversations I’m having are dull as shit, but I think they’re fascinating and inspiring and really interesting. So yeah. Maybe you need to have those conversations with people that-, we’re going to say it a thousand times… Yeah, you get it.

[00:16:39] – Steve
There you go. Honestly, I feel like we’ve answered it. I feel like-,

[00:16:43] – Frankie
Really?

[00:16:44] – Steve
No, I do. I feel like she partly answered it herself. Right?

[00:16:47] – Frankie
Yes. True.

[00:16:48] – Steve
First of all, you’ve got to realign what you think ‘success’ is. You’ve got to surround yourself with the right people, but also, if you need it, some sort of formulated approach and just, yeah — figure out what those new markers are to celebrate. If you’re somebody who needs that in your life. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with needing that in your life!

[00:17:05] – Frankie
We all need a bit of that. Yeah.

[00:17:07] – Steve
If your only counsel is yourself, that can be bad news.

[00:17:10] – Frankie
Yeah, and when you’re stuck in, you know, the school run and the weekly shop and it’s just you to keep you going. It can feel like Groundhog Day and you never have the time and the space to just sit and go, “Oh my God, I’ve achieved loads of shit!”

[00:17:28] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:17:29] – Frankie
And cleaned up loads of it as well — ha!

[00:17:30] – Steve
But that’s why it’s cool in our sort of co-mentoring situation, we get together and say, “Well, what did we do last month?” It helps you focus both on the things you want to achieve going forward, but also make you realise what you’ve done looking back as well. Especially when you feel like you haven’t and the other person goes, “Well, hang on, what about when you did that?” And you go, “Oh, yeah, actually, that was good. That was good.”

[00:17:52] – Frankie
Yeah. And that’s not a formal thing. We don’t fill out any paperwork. No money is exchanged.

[00:17:56] – Steve
No, just cake.

[00:17:58] – Frankie
Cake.