Being vulnerable with clients

I have some difficult personal life stuff going on at the moment. I tell you this firstly because I want to explain the reduction in the frequency of my writing landing in your inbox. Secondly it’s the only thing I can really write about today because I’m thinking about little else. Don’t worry, I’m not about to unload my woes onto you. But I do want to be open and honest with how this is affecting me as a freelancer and some of the decisions I have had to think through recently.

Dealing with personal stuff is something we all have to do in the background of our working lives. How much it affects our physical and mental health will shift depending on what is going on. How much it affects our ability to do our best work will also shift. This has certainly been my experience over the last few weeks.

If you’re permanently employed there will be threshold you have, likely impacted by the culture of your organisation and the relationships you have with your superiors and peers, where you feel able to share and/or ask for time off.

As a freelancer this feels very different.

I have no colleagues to share with over lunch. I don’t have a boss I can ask for a day off. I have clients who need things doing and sometimes, not always, I have collaborators who I can share with/lean on. With all this in mind, the biggest question for me has been whether to tell my clients and collaborators or not.

For context, I work with people in different ways. I sometimes do direct work with organisations, these people are my clients. They are buying my services and I am contracted to deliver specified things by agreed timelines. I also join small agency teams when they need an extra pair of hands. These people are my collaborators but there will also be a client who I may or may not have a direct relationship with.

As it stands I’m working across three projects. I’m working with two different agencies and I have direct relationships with two clients. I feel grateful that those clients are people I would call friends. I have long standing relationships with both of them. The relationships with my collaborators are newer and feel different to each other.

The first thing that went through my mind when thinking this through, and the main reason I wanted to share, was my worry of appearing incapable. I care deeply about the work I do - I always have. So letting people know I may not be able to deliver in the way I would like to was hard. I worried about letting people down, I worried about people not getting value for money, I worried about my reputation and the likelihood that these people would want to work with me again.

Another thing I considered if whether I should take different approaches for different projects. At the moment I have two big pieces of work on and one smaller one. In the end, I decided to share more openly with the clients and collaborators on the two larger pieces of work. This felt like enough for me. The other project is sporadic involvement here and there and while my mental health is likely going to be up and down, without much warning or pattern, I felt confident enough in my ability to deliver pre-planned workshops.

What I felt less confident in was the busy period I had approaching managing two complex pieces of work with in-person engagement involved. I wanted to make sure my clients and collaborators weren’t blind sided if I needed to step away for an afternoon or a day unexpectedly. I wanted them to know I was doing the best I could.

I’m happy to say that all versions of this conversation went well. Everyone was extremely supportive in their own ways and I feel much more able to keep going knowing they are aware of the backdrop.

I hope this helps other freelancers out there realise that you don’t always have to just keep going, clients and collaborators are only human. And all humans have ‘stuff’.

I’ll be back when the ‘stuff’ feels lighter.