Top 5 Tips for Denim Freelancers
Making the switch from corporate roles to consulting comes with a unique set of benefits and challenges.
In a Carved in Blue webinar on July 7, we caught up with eight denim freelancers who have a combined 150 years of experience in the business to get their thoughts on their experiences being self employed.
Panelists had varied reasons for striking out on their own, from being able to better balance parenthood and work to wanting additional time to devote to their own label. Others were eager to move denim in a more sustainable direction by injecting outside expertise.
Freelancing unlocks the ability to work with a variety of brands, but consultants can face hurdles such as not getting paid on time, balancing multiple bosses and collaborating across time zones.
Here are five key takeaways for freelancers shared by the speakers.
Set expectations
“You just have to really try and get expectations out in the open quite early on when you’re working with any company…Every time you go to a different company, it’s always going to be a different set of ground rules. So you have to work out how you’re going to engage with them, your communication has to be absolutely perfect, you have to know who your point of contacts are and really make sure that you’ve got all that support there to do the job that you know you can do for the company, and just make sure that they know exactly what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, so it actually works for everybody,” said Miles Johnson.
Say goodbye to the 9 to 5
“My biggest challenge [since turning freelance] is I don’t think you ever turn off, and when you become a consultant you’re working constantly and you can’t switch off at 5 o’clock anymore. But that’s part of working with amazing clients, is you don’t really feel that you have to,” said Claire Ford, a consultant for Outland Denim.
Pick differentiated clients
“It’s trickier if your clients are quite similar that you have at the same time, and I think then they do feel a little bit more uncomfortable with it. So I’ve always tried to have quite different feeling clients working at the same time. And that definitely helps me to design for them and to compartmentalize what I’m doing for them, but also helps them feel like one client isn’t getting the better of you for that particular look,” said Amy Roberton.
Protect your business
“Remember that around the actual jobs and the clients that you’re doing and the creative part, there is also a lot of extra bits to running a business or being a consultant. You will spend a lot of time with your accountant—get a good accountant. Every quarter you will probably spend a week preparing paperwork for your accountant, so get a good one who can advise you well, otherwise you can lose a lot of money,” said Laura Dixon from Three By One Europe.
“My advice would be to lawyer up. If you’ve got friends that are solicitors or lawyers, getting a draft agreement made. If you’re a freelancer, most of the time you go into a golden handshake or you just agree to do the work, and sometimes you would sign an agreement. Having your own agreement, even if it’s just on one page, and it says your terms…and making sure you have something written down and signed on your terms. Because a lot of the clients I have are not in the U.K.—they’re in Pakistan or Bangladesh or even Hong Kong—and they smile when they know they’ve got one up on you and they don’t have to pay you in time,” said Mohsin Sajid from Denim History and Endrime.
Share your knowledge
“As freelancers, our job is to bring the expertise and all our contacts into a business, and enable everybody to go on that journey and make their products better…Sometimes you go into a business, some people are quite intimidated about you, and you face some resistance sometimes in companies, which is hard. So you have to share your knowledge as much as you can, and you have to take everybody on the journey. And that way everybody gets the end goal,” said Salli Deighton.
To view the full conversation watch here.