One of my favourite things about being freelance is the variety it provides. Wednesday felt like a particularly good example of that variety, as well as the brain-stretch you need to keep jumping between different work, so here’s another insight into a day in the life of a charity consultant: 6am ish: Wake…
Tag: Consultant
International Mischief Making: Facilitation Training
“Serious results don’t require serious behaviour” is the motto of Mischief Makers – the international facilitation and training company. I’ve just completed an 8-week block of training with them on leading groups, with a particular focus on hybrid settings – where you have some delegates in person and some joining online. It’s been…
Generalists Unite
There’s a beauty and a complexity to being a generalist. How do you build and strengthen your professional identity when your range is broad? Awkward Introductions I feel one of the things I want to work on this year is being more comfortable owning the label of a generalist. When I started out,…
A Year of Business
I’m officially a year into self-employment – while I didn’t do a huge celebration, I did take my husband out for an amazing taster menu dinner and raised a glass then. So, where am I a year on – what’s the same and what’s changed? Name Changes Early doors I started using the…
A Year of Blogs
This week marks a year of blogs – 52 entries in total. Somehow through the madness of going self-employed I’ve managed to write one every week. Or more truthfully, there is a blog for every week of the year – sometimes these were written once a week and sometimes they were written a…
What You Need is a Marathon
“What you need is a marathon” – said no-one, ever. But this week marked my second one, and even I struggle to explain why I put myself through it. My first one was a kind of therapy, booked in the delirium of sleeplessness in the middle of the night, holding my first baby…
Lessons in Communities of Practice
This week I finished up a contract doing network development for a community of practice. It started off as 3 months and thanks to funding being confirmed, it was extended to six months. They’re an association I used to be part of in a previous role, so how was it being on the…
Embracing Uncertainty
The last few weeks have seen the end of two contracts and I’m finally entering a lighter period of work. It’s a great time to really think through how to make the best use of this time. Acceptance I think a big thing here is about acceptance. Having spoken to a number of…
Work Coaching
I’ve recently started something I’ve been thinking about for a while – coaching. But for myself, rather than offering it to others. I’d heard from a few people that they found it really useful to talk to someone independent, that it helps them work through certain decisions or situations as well as helping…
A-Z of Freelancer Costs
There’s been some interesting discussions lately amongst freelance colleagues about whether some organisations understand the value of work they’re after and by extension what goes into people’s rates. It got me thinking about the costs of being self-employed, and how little I understood before I went freelance myself. I was definitely one of…