Boundaries? Who’s she?
When it comes to being a freelancer, switching off isn’t easy. You’re sitting relaxing with your friends outside of your designated ‘office hours’ and your phone dings, it’s an email from a client and you resist the urge to open it. Five minutes later, you open the email and now you’re in a deep spiral of all the work you’ve got to do for the client when you’re back in ‘office hours’. We’ve all been there.
It’s time to set boundaries! Here’s a mini guide to help you set some small boundaries that will make your life that little bit easier when it comes to freelancing.
1) Set office hours and stick to them. Do your best not to reply to clients outside of these office hours unless it’s urgent. This will help you stay present outside of work and prevent you from checking emails when you’re having downtime with family and friends.
2) Keep your conversations with clients in one place. If clients direct message you for rates, direct them to your email or another preferred method of contact. This will help you keep a record of conversations and keeps it professional. I personally have a lot of people direct message me on Instagram for rates which makes it really hard when my rate sheet is a PDF and sending it through any other way makes my skin crawl a little (a screenshot of the rate sheet just doesn’t work the same). It also makes it easy to follow up on people who have asked for rates rather than going through your DM’s trying to find them. So.. all conversations in one place, you got it?
3) Set deadlines for each scope of work. This will let your client know when the work will be completed by and prevents them from continuously asking when it will be finished. This means you can spend more time working on the project and less time on emails. If the deadline changes, you can always communicate this. If it’s a long project, keep them updated at each step. I know for me personally, a lot of photography work depends on the weather and if the weather man is wrong and it’s raining when it said it would be blue skies and sunny then it ruins my whole working day which means I always keep clients informed if anything changes. Communication is important but there is such thing as too much communication and it prevents you from getting on with the job.
4) Let your client know how many revisions of the project they are entitled to before you start. (Did you hear that? We said before, not in the midst of it!). This will help you with time management and ensure you don’t have to re-do the project ten times before they are happy. It will ensure you and the client both have a clear understanding of the brief and no ones time is wasted. Not every project or image is going to be perfect the first time around, sometime’s its a communication issue, other times it’s a misunderstanding of the brief. Either way, re-shoots and revisions are expected and you need to make time for them and think of this when deciding your rates!
5) Have a lunch break, a real lunch break. We know, sometimes it’s difficult to step away from the computer or a creative project but to keep working hard and being creative, fuel is necessary! Step away from the computer and turn off your emails on your phone for a set amount of time and sit and enjoy your lunch, properly. Your business isn’t going to crumble because you decided to have lunch. (we promise)