First 90 days (foundation)

This week marked my first 90 days as a consultant. I’m counting it as foundation setting, however, rather than actual because 90% of it was while working my notice in employment and running some freelance work alongside. As the first 90 days are generally considered a key transition period into any new role, what are my reflections on where I’ve got to?

Why 90 days?

90 days are often talked about in employment – as the key transition period into a new role, one that’s critical in terms of successfully onboarding someone, as well as for the individual to demonstrate their value. Fail to make an impact in the those first 90 days and the rest of the role looks sketchy…. So important in fact that someone’s even written a book about how to make the best use of this critical period.

Work/life balance

If I’m being honest, I should probably lodge a complaint with HR. This has been a rollercoaster of a 3 months. As I put my notice in, I remember saying to my husband “I feel like I’m about to start burning the candle at both ends,” realistically I think I went straight to putting gunpower in the middle. There has been a relentlessness to taking on freelance work while working a condensed work pattern with a job, while raising two small children, while attempting to do all the other bits of life. Was I crazy to do it? Maybe. But did I feel like it was necessary? Also yes.

I think most people would take a similar approach to me, though, in that you wouldn’t make the leap without having freelance work lined up, otherwise how are you even going to know there’s a market for your work?! Whether everyone else would be trying to spin so many plates, I don’t know, but then again, I sort of think everyone’s busy and to make something successful you just have to give it your best shot.

On a personal level though it really has been tough. There’s been a lot of late nights (unfortunately paired with a lot of early mornings, thanks to my youngest), a lot of squeezing work into all available slots – lunch breaks, nap times, weekends. My laptop has been set up at the breakfast table, I’ve answered emails in the playground, made phone calls on my lunchbreak, I’ve edited in the easy chair in my kids’ room waiting for them to fall asleep – it’s been a case of just making it work however possible.

What’s kept me sane?

I think when you know you’re doing something for a greater good, you somehow have some extra energy to drive you through. I knew this period wouldn’t last forever, and I knew I was doing it in order to give myself the best possible chance of transitioning over successfully. There were definitely times where I felt wonky, but here are some of the things that kept me going:

• Family – I’ve got a lovely partner who never once asked “working again?” I think it definitely helped that he works for himself, so has done a fair amount of additional/antisocial hours over the last few years. He’s behind this experiment/career move of mine and I’m really lucky we’ve been able to work as a really good team balancing all the home admin and childcare, as well as accepting that time together has really taken a hit lately. My parents have also been a huge help for childcare, and have supported us a number of times when there was just too much of a clash of things.

• Exercise – I really didn’t run as much as I’d hoped over the last few months but I did manage to keep up martial arts. I wonder if there was something about the structure – with running I have to book on, work out where the start point is, maybe plan a route and lead it myself, which was energy I didn’t really have spare. Luckily my kickboxing classes are set times, set places, I’m expected to show up and almost always, I made it. Even on those days when I really wasn’t feeling it. I knew those were the days I probably needed to go the most.
  
• Healthy-ish habits –I know, absolutely, that eating well had a huge impact on my physical/mental/emotional health. So naturally I’d planned to have overnight oats for breakfast, homemade salads, healthy snacks and balanced dinners, and all the hydration in the world. What I actually achieved was more like 70% good and 30% utter crap. There’s something about a lack of sleep and stress that makes my biscuit in-take rise exponentially. And when you’re popping to the shop for a bar of chocolate, who doesn’t eye up the 5-pack of doughnuts?! And we all know they’re not meant for sharing.

• Life fun – I made a really conscious effort to still do stuff, even with the lack of sleep and that fairly constant feeling of “I’ve got this big to-do list waiting for me.” I took the kids out on trips, I organised playdates, I saw friends, we even somehow made it abroad (just my husband and I!!) for a blissful 3 nights even though the packing/prep with two kids without them even coming with us, meant the run-up was a whole of extra work.

What have I achieved?

The whole point of the 90 days is in demonstrating your impact – a period of proving that you’re up to the challenge.

Workwise I’ve now completed my notice and left my employed role. I’ve completed my first two freelance contracts, one in facilitation and one in evaluation. I’ve just begun working on another in policy development and communication and interviewed last week for another opportunity. Both completed pieces of work were set fee contracts, which have much greater flexibility in when to complete the work across the week but come with the challenge of it being down to you to keep boundaries and ensure you stay in the black. These latter two are set-hours contracts which tie you down to weekly commitments but come with the huge bonus of being regular and predictable income sources.

Financially, I’ve banked just under 3 months’ worth of my gross employment income. This feels like a huge win because I’ve still been getting my employment income, and it means this income is a bonus fund. It was a big deciding factor for me in pushing through this period, knowing I’d bank some contingency to help cover any quieter periods while the future feels so uncertain.

Business-building-wise I’m now the proud owner of an actual website and I’ve set up Calendy (and very nearly linked everything up to a decent level of efficiency). However hard I found it, I’ve publicly “launched myself” professionally and personally via the various platforms. Behind the scenes I’ve got a laptop, Office 365 and started my business cloud filing systems to keep some kind of order. I have professional indemnity insurance, I now have templates for contracts, invoices, consent forms and proposals. I’ve done a cashflow, set up a separate account for invoices, and I’ve crunched the numbers to set aside some chunks of that for the necessary tax and national insurance.

I’ve linked into existing freelancer networks and read a ton of stuff (unfortunately a lot on gov.uk) in order to get my head around all the new aspects of working for yourself. I’ve launched and kept this blog going, which while being really tough as times as something else on the to-do list each week, it’s been proved invaluable in helping me work through my thinking on certain areas, encouraged me to be self-reflective, and also been a really handy way of helping explain what on earth I’m trying to do to friends and family!

How does the future feel?

Right now? Pretty bright. I have work secured, opportunities for more work seem strong and a contingency fund in the bank helping me sleep at night. I’m getting a much stronger sense of who I am business-wise and how to present myself, and growing in confidence in how to market myself. Invariably there’s a whole load more to learn and more to do – not just from new work that may come my way but from a business and professional development point of view too.

What I’m most excited about right now is that as we start August, and my son’s first summer holiday from school, I have about 40% of the weekly work commitment I’ve had up over the last 5 years (and that’s not including all the extra hours of adding freelance work on top recently), and with only a small drop in monthly income. That, in itself, is a huge life win. To be able to take a bit more time for me, to spend some more time with my son – I can’t wait. Then when he starts back in September, I get to properly bed into being fully freelance and that really will be a test of how much this is possible long-term.