Business

At the beginning of your freelancing career, you find yourself saying “yes” to just about any client and opportunity that comes your way, because let’s be realistic, you have bills to pay. However, further down the line in your freelancing career, when you aren’t desperate for work and you have your regular clients in place, you are often still left guilt-tripped into doing more work than you can handle due to not being able to say the dreaded word; “no”. 

Well, I’m here to tell you its ok to say no from time to time, under one condition.

If it doesn’t help you reach your end goal – you can say no. 

It could be that a golden opportunity that you’re presented with, and who am I to tell you that you should turn that down?! Instead, remember what your focus is, will saying ‘yes’ now get you a step closer to where you want to be in 5 years? If so, brilliant! If not, don’t be afraid to say no.

You don’t have to accept every project that comes your way.

You have enough on your plate already without someone asking for you to do extra work that’s out of scope. If excepting to do that extra bit of work is going to mean that you have to work late every night of the week for little to no reward, then just say no (it sounds scarier than it is – and you’ll feel super empowered!).

There is a difference between having a choice in what work you take on and being responsible. You may have people at home that are dependable on your income so being picky about who you work with isn’t always an option especially if you have had a slow month.

Being responsible means you may have to work with a client you don’t particularly like and do work that you aren’t over the moon about but at the end of the day if you aren’t in a strong financial situation it would be irresponsible to say no, wouldn’t it? 

Whereas having a choice is for those freelancers who have the financial freedom to pick and choose, it may seem counterintuitive to decline a project but when times aren’t desperate, there is no harm in being picky about who gets your time and who doesn’t.

There is nothing worse than over-promising and underdelivering a project for a client so before you say “yes” ask yourself:

If you can say yes to any of these then you don’t have time to say yes to that extra work you have been offered, it can wait till a later date.

The pay doesn’t meet your expectations 

Not everything is about money but, as a freelancer, we need to pay the bills and we can’t just be negotiating a lower day rate for any old client! Stick to your guns and try not to waver too far below your fixed day rate, and if someone only offers less, you know you aren’t the best fit for each other.

There’s nothing worse than working on something that isn’t interesting to you. It’ll feel like it drags on forever, and you won’t produce your best. We all have our certain interests and our strengths when it comes to client work, although there will be times where we have to do work that we aren’t thrilled about. If you can afford to be picky about what you choose to work on, then no-one is stopping you from saying no.

Be appreciative that they thought of you for their project 

Give a brief reason as to why you said no 

“I can’t give you an answer right now, could u check back with me later?”

“No sorry, I can’t do that but I can do this…”

“I appreciate you thinking of me for this project however I have a lot on my plate right now, sorry”

“I’m afraid I can’t commit to that right now, but I can recommend someone who might be able to…”

“This sounds great, thank you for thinking of me, however, I could only start this project in the new year”

Being a freelancer can be hard but sometimes learning to say no can be even harder and we understand that so hopefully now you can feel confident to say no to work that simply isn’t doable for you.

Learning when to say no as a freelancer

As working from home is particularly prevalent in a Covid-19 world, many of our customers have been asking us about home-working and how that may affect their insurances. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers: –

I have home contents insurance, does that cover my work equipment too?

The short answer is probably not, although there are a few things to consider here. Firstly, who owns and who paid for the equipment? If you purchased the equipment personally then your home insurance may provide some cover. However, it is important to check as sometimes equipment used for business purposes is excluded. In most cases, your business equipment will have been a business expense and it is therefore very unlikely that your home insurance will cover it, even if that is where you work from. You should therefore ensure that your business insurance includes cover for your equipment. When choosing a policy, you need to consider where you may take your equipment and whether that policy will cover you. Here at ipro, our business equipment section provides worldwide cover, so you can even take it on holiday with you!

Do I need to tell my home insurer I am working from home?

It depends what you are doing. Most home insurance policies allow ‘clerical work’ to be undertaken at home. This essentially means that any computer-based work will be acceptable, however, you should check with your individual home insurer to ensure that you are meeting any requirements they may have. If, however, you are having business visitors to your home or doing any form of manual work then you must tell your home insurer, failure to do so could invalidate your policy in the event of a claim.

I have clients coming to my home for meetings from time to time, what insurance cover do I need?

If you have clients coming to your home, it is important that you ensure that your business insurance has public liability cover attached to it. Just remember that compensation payments for slips, trips and falls can get into seriously eye-watering figures, so it’s important to make certain that you have the right insurance in place for protecting yourself and your business.

Most home insurance policies do not allow or provide protection for business visitors. Even if your business has a public liability insurance in place, it’s important that you advise your home insurer. This would be considered a material fact to which you have a duty to advise them.

Will my home insurance cover me for a mistake I have made in the course of my work if I work from home?

No – if you are offering a service or advice in any form to your clients then you must have a professional indemnity policy in place. A professional indemnity policy can cover you for the cost of defending a claim and any award that may be made against you. It can even provide protection in a situation whereby you have been accused of making a mistake but have not actually done anything wrong.

Working from home and your insurance

Most freelancers struggle with admin at some point in their career.

Nobody can quite prepare you for the amount of ‘faff’ that comes with running your own business. A lot of it might have been managed by somebody else in your previous ‘employed’ world, but now, unless you work with a PA or remote support system, it’s pretty much down to you.

At first, admin doesn’t feel like it makes you any money: you’d rather be spending your time on fee-earning work, yes? In the long term though, if you don’t keep on top of it, it will soon start to waste your time and cost you money.

Luckily, as with most things in life, there will be an app to help you out. As time is of the essence and anything that makes your life run more smoothly is worth considering, we have compiled a list of some of the best apps for freelancers.

A great way to keep up to date with the latest news that is relevant to you, Flipboard helps you get through the huge amount of content out there, to enjoy a newsfeed tailored to your interests or industry.

Running out of storage is not fun. Dropbox enables you to share files with your clients, your customers and other contacts very easily.

It’s a bit obvious, but you should have it on your phone. Regardless of your type of work, most businesses these days use Instagram for research, promotion and communications.

There’s no denying that running your own business can be stressful and freelancers don’t have the luxury of likeminded colleagues with whom to confide or unwind. Headspace provides hundreds of really quick meditation sessions focusing on stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep problems.

List writing. Day planning. Journaling. They all work for some, but if your workload starts to increase, you might want to move from paper to app and Trello is hugely popular for freelancers as it’s a really easy to use  time and task management system.

Described as ‘Tinder for Business’, this networking tool allows the user to connect easily -with fellow freelancers for projects as well as with potential clients.

Yes, Uber is handy – but Zipcar is a better app for getting all kinds of vehicles and many freelancers have bulky kit that they need to transport around. Zipcar provides cars and vans for rent 24 hours a day. A ‘one-way trip’ option means you’re only paying for the vehicle when you’re actually driving, helping to keep the costs down.

Love reading, but no time to do it, thanks to all your work? Blinkist allows you to listen to books condensed into 15 minutes. A great learning tool if you’re a little time-starved. If you’d rather get immersed in the full versions of books, you’re better off with Audible.

Freelancers now have the luxury of choosing from any number of cloud-based accounting systems but Freshbooks does seem particularly popular. It has a clear, easy to use system that gives you the tools for time tracking, invoicing, payments and reports. Other similar apps include Freeagent and Cushion.

It had to be in here. 2020 has been the year of Zoom and with no certainty of face to face meetings being the norm in the near future, you need to be familiar with Zoom. And WebEx. And Teams. And the need to have a tidy backdrop!

The best apps depend entirely on the individual of course, and the industry in which you are operating. But the above list gives a snapshot and includes some of the most popular apps, that could help with your time-keeping, training and travel; your news and your networking; your marketing, meetings and mental health; your finance and filing.

Leaving you with more time to get on with the job at hand.