FREELANCER LONELINESS AND HOW TO TACKLE IT

Small Business talks to Claudia

She shares her experience of freelance life, the loneliness of it and tips on how to combat it.

“Freelancers cannot be lazy when it comes to overcoming solitude. Like new business, it’s part of the job and one that you can’t pick up and drop down. It needs to be part of your routine.”

Claudia set up CLO PR 18 months ago and overcoming loneliness was the hardest part of the new job. The worst thing is not having anybody to bounce ideas off so you’re just left wondering if what you’re doing is actually any good or if it’s all rubbish. As a team player, this didn’t sit well with her. Check out out how she overcame it.

http://smallbusiness.co.uk/freelancer-loneliness-isolation-2545287/

5 MINUTES WITH NIGEL SARBUTTS, FOUNDER, THE PR CAVALRY

For over three decades Nigel Sarbutts has been the head of three PR agencies in Manchester, London and Leeds and he is now on a new mission to change the PR industry forever. Connecting clients with freelancers has in the past been a murky, unstructured world. Until now. We caught up with him to talk about his latest venture, The PR Cavalry, a platform to help match-make clients with the right freelancers and vice versa, to keep everyone happy in the game.  

“Freelancers have historically been unsearchable”

1. What drove you to create The PR Cavalry?

Having been in the communications industry for three decades, I realised that the freelancer is used in a very analogue way by agencies and businesses alike. They’ve historically been unsearchable. Recruitment of freelancers has, as far as I can remember, been time-consuming and haphazard, whilst the job search for freelancers themselves is often very random and involves a lot of time spent networking.

The process by which a freelancer is recruited is totally inefficient. You can have the most organised business where nothing could break their stride but then something goes wrong and the immediate rush is to throw bodies into a project to save it. The company jumps onto LinkedIn and calls recruitment consultancies and what they get back is a mess because the freelancer may not have the precise skills for the job. There is the need for something like The PR Cavalry to codify freelancers’ skills and match these skills to a specific brief set by the client.

What’s more, a much larger chunk of the workforce is freelance now. If you’re a team leader, the question you’re asking yourself is, ‘How can I meet the ever expanding list of client needs with a fixed team?’. The answer is to make a flexible team and make a decision to embrace the freelancer. And for freelancers, it would be far better to be found for their specific skills to meet a specific need rather than just who happened to be recommended by someone by chance.

2. What's the biggest lesson you've learnt from starting up The PR Cavalry?

I never anticipated the complexity of building a sophisticated website based on search algorithms. Yes, I knew it would be intricate but there’s been a lot of hardcore tech decisions made behind the scenes in order to build a site that really does something well.

3. And greatest milestone so far?

The milestone we didn’t plan for was having a client approach us with a peach of a job before we’d actually opened the shop. The client nearly fell off her seat when she knew that she wouldn’t have to go to her board of directors to make the case for an appointment with the usual 20% fee on top of this. The freelancers pay 10% for the benefit of being matched with work suited to them. We’re still building the talent bank with freelancers and we’re not seeing resistance to this model of working, which is encouraging.

4. The lack of diversity is well-documented in the PR industry. What do you think is the biggest barrier to people of colour getting in and what should businesses be doing to tackle this?

PR is bedeviled with unpaid internships, it needs to become less the preserve of the privileged, which still means an in-built bias against people of colour. I think anonymised CVs could certainly help. Deloitte have anonymised their recruitment process to become far more representative of our diverse society. At 53, I see ageism also being a barrier to entry - PR is inherently a young person’s game. This needs to change.

5. The PR world is ever changing. What do you think are some of the biggest changes we’re set to see in the future?

The sheer number and types of comms channels that PR is habitually into now beyond media relations. This creates a double edged sword, where PR is fighting for a broader range of jobs whilst trying to maintain the expertise that it stands for. We’re also struggling with the real dip in circulation of media consumption, especially regional media. Because 70% of PR is still media relations, that means we have a smaller lever to pull in reaching key stakeholders. Clients see that as becoming less impactful. The ratio of journalists to PRs is a problem too. If there are fewer gatekeepers in the media room, it’s more difficult to get the message through.

PR doesn’t do well in the evaluation debate either. We’re creating ever more frameworks and dashboards to represent outputs but are we helping to solve real business dilemmas? We’re still not forensically geared towards helping organisations to develop and question their intent and why PR is the answer.

6. What excites you about the PR industry?

After 30 years in the industry I still find it exciting, it’s changing so rapidly. I find it fascinating the many creative ways organisations respond to news in society. Lush has been in the press recently for its window campaign to highlight the issue of undercover police overstepping the mark to infiltrate the lives of activists. What Lush has done isn’t new but brands continue to create debate. And the accountability to stakeholders is interesting. Regional media’s power is falling off a cliff so how do the bodies that the media used to hold to account continue to respond to stakeholders? It changes how comms are organised.

We’re also facing a tidal wave with the gig economy growing. If we get The PR Cavalry right, we will put a dent in it.

7. Where do you get your inspiration?

I am a voracious consumer of news. I am constantly looking to the people I follow on Twitter to get knocked on the side of the head with new ideas. I love the fact that I can go onto the platform and find the new, the odd and the wonderful to keep the day interesting.

8. What's in store for The PR Cavalry this year?

We have two milestones still to come. We need to make sure the shelves are stocked enough with talented freelancers before opening up to clients so they feel that there is a broad and deep talent pool to search. And we need to make a profit. Watch this space!

https://prcavalry.com

5 MINUTES WITH...CASEY BIRD, FOUNDER OF THE FREELANCE CIRCLE

Meet Casey Bird, who is trailblazing the advertising, marketing and design world to give freelancers the chance to anonymously share their experiences and get a heads up on agencies others love, or loath. The Freelance Circle is helping to change the way businesses think about and work with freelancers. We take our hat off to this lady....

1. What's the biggest lesson you've learnt from starting up The Freelance Circle?

I’d say one of the biggest lessons from launching my review site, The Freelance Circle, would be to ‘trust your decisions’. As a founder you need to really trust your own opinion and thinking – you know the answer, so why ask others? Don’t get me wrong, opinions matter, but only from the right people. Otherwise, you end up with an overload of different opinions and confuse yourself, when the only one that matters at the end of the day, is yours.

2. What's the one piece of business advice you wish you'd been given when you started?

Be patient. Don’t expect miracles overnight. When I first launched The Freelance Circle, I wanted to wake up the next day with millions of freelance reviews from all over the world and Beyoncé tweeting how badass my idea was. You have to work hard and dedicate thinking time to build a credible brand. These things don’t happen overnight.

3. Was there ever a point when you wanted to give up?

It’s been one year since ideation and 6 months since the official launch – so I’d hope I don’t want to give up yet! Over the last few years I’ve had many business ideas, however with this idea, I knew there was a real insight into it and a real need, and thankfully that ‘spark’ hasn’t died and instead fueled me to keep going.

4. What's been the biggest milestone for the organization so far?

In just 6 months we have now reached 200 organic reviews – no paid advertising, no paid search – just freelancers genuinely wanting to share reviews on their experiences and agencies ready to listen. That has to be one amazing milestone so far. The second would be 2 London based advertising agencies contacting us already to ask for more information on the reviews and asking to collaborate to use our insights to make their workplace better, not just for freelancers but permanent staff too.

5. Who is your inspiration?

Generally speaking, anyone who is pursuing their dream and saying no to the status quo inspires me – people who put themselves out there and maybe fail or succeed, are inspiring. I am also constantly inspired by people who stand up for what they believe in, and stand up on behalf of those who can’t – or whose voices aren’t heard. But if I was answering the question in terms of just business I would say a mainstream inspiration is Richard Branson and an industry inspiration is Cindy Gallop.

6. What keeps you motivated?

There are 2 things, firstly the goal to make a difference to freelance and work culture and experiences both for the freelancers and agencies. And there’s the fact I love being my own boss.

7. What business or brand do you look up to?

Facebook and Virgin, both as businesses and brands. As brands they treat their employees fair and equal, offer brilliant maternity /paternity pay, work-life balance, unlimited holiday, flexible working. This is the future of work and how you retain great staff.

8. If you weren't doing this, you would be....

A travel writer.

https://thefreelancecircle.com