Annie Ridout - The Freelance Mum

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Annie Ridout 2019

Annie Ridout asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The information in this book is for general guidance only and is not legal advice. If you need more details on your rights or legal advice about what action to take, please see an advisor or solicitor.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008313630

Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008313647

Version: 2018-12-17

For Joni, whose birth prompted me to change the way I work

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

1. Getting started as a freelance mum

2. Money

3. The daily routine

4. The pram in the hall

5. Fake it till you make it

6. How to stand out on social media

7. Blogging and SEO

8. PR: the best person to do it is YOU

9. Network #IRL (or rather, ‘making friends’)

End note

Reference notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

I’ve been a freelance mum for the past four years and for me, it works very well. I’m the primary caregiver for my children, but I also support myself financially and contribute to the overall household income. I can afford to buy food and clothes for myself and my kids and I can save up for family holidays. The main issue for me when I first went freelance – at least initially – was money; you don’t have that lovely set lump sum appear in your bank, miraculously, at the end of each working month like a PAYE employee does. However, as I discovered, there are ways to secure a reliable income and establish some financial stability when you work freelance as a mum, and I’m going to teach you how.

This book will walk you through the necessary steps to setting yourself up as a freelance mum. From deciding on your career path to launching a website, social media, getting your name out there and perfecting your brand. I’ve also included a comprehensive guide to the childcare options available to freelance working mums, suggested daily routines for optimum productivity, as well as tips on establishing and maintaining healthy work–life boundaries. Using my own experience, alongside tips and advice from a multitude of other mums who have successfully made a freelance career for themselves, I’ll show you that with hard work and determination, any mother can thrive as a freelancer.

Freelancers were worth £119 billion to the UK economy in 2016.

There are 4.8 million self-employed workers in the UK, making up 15.1 per cent of the UK workforce – and we’ve almost all chosen it for the same reason: flexibility. You can decide your own hours and avoid the slog of a daily commute. But the 79 per cent increase in freelancing mums over the past ten years 1speaks volumes about where women stand in terms of work and family. Many of us are keen to continue developing our careers after having children, but only if we can find work that fits comfortably around family life.

This desire to find flexible work might well be the reason why 54,000 women in the UK are losing their jobs each year while pregnant or on maternity leave. 2The work culture welcomes back new mothers who will continue working just as they did before they went on maternity leave – same hours, some overtime – but request part-time work, and you’re out. This is when setting up as a freelancer becomes less about flexibility and more about necessity. With no job to return to following maternity leave, women might register as sole traders, or launch their own businesses that they can run alongside parenting. And these so-called ‘mumpreneurs’ contribute an impressive £7 billion to the UK economy each year.

It’s not always a smooth transition from PAYE employee to freelance mum, but once you’re up and running, it really does offer flexibility in terms of fitting your career around your family. I lost my full-time, well-paid copywriting job when I left to have a baby, which led to something of a career and identity crash. But I soon realised that my 9–6 Monday–Friday job in east London would have been incompatible with the type of mother I wanted to be. So I flipped my panic into productivity, and when my daughter turned one I launched a digital parenting and lifestyle magazine called The Early Hour.

Three years in, The Early Hour reaches 100,000+ parents a month. I’ve learned how to monetise my online platform and build a career for myself around it – including writing freelance articles for the Guardian , Red Magazine , Stylist and Metro . I’ve appeared on BBC radio and TV, and I spoke at Stylist Live alongside celebrity chef Jasmine Hemsley and the founder of Propercorn, Cassandra Stavrou. The Early Hour has acted as a springboard for me; leading to lucrative consultancy work, well-paid copywriting gigs and being made a partner at women’s app, Clementine. This has been my way of sticking two fingers up to the company who employed me as a copywriter but thought I’d become useless as soon as I gave birth. It was my way of saying, ‘you can take away my job but you can’t take away my power’.