Hi Reader,

Happy Friday!

I'm opening the doors to The Hello Effect for cohort #2 on Tuesday (1st Sept). I'm only going to be opening it to the waitlist as there are only 20 spots available this time, so get yourself on there if you want in. Here's a recap of what's included as well as the waitlist.

P.S. In this week's Instagram post, I shared how I've lasted 13 years without a "proper job". Check it out here. And don't forget to give me a follow for regular tips and tricks!

Here's what I've been up to this week work-wise:

👉 I wrote 2 pieces for clients (Modash)

👉 I refreshed 2 pieces for Shopify

👉 I had a call about a content plan for a client

👉 I gave a talk on running a six-figure business

👉 I had a kick-off call with a new client

👉 I spent a day at the spa for my birthday (which is on Monday 🥰)

⏱ Approx hours spent on client work this week: ~16

⏱ Approx hours spent on non-client work: ~2

💰 Total revenue this week: £2,780

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Friday Freelance Tip​​ ✨ ​

Let's talk about luck.

You know the kind I mean... the "ugh, you're SO lucky you get to work for yourself" kind. The kind people say when they see a freelancer doing well and assume the universe just handed it to them.

After 12 years of freelancing (and working alongside hundreds of others doing the same) I can tell you with total confidence: there's no such thing as luck. There's grit, there's stubbornness, there's privilege, and there are three very unglamorous things that every "lucky" freelancer does on repeat.

I call them the holy trinity: exposure, trust, and reciprocity. Stack them up over time and they DO look a lot like luck from the outside.

Exposure: a.k.a. being the first name that comes to mind

Exposure is the simplest of the three. It just means people see you. You're around. You're on their radar. So when someone needs help, you're already in the back of their mind.

This is most of why my clients keep coming back to me. I've worked with one client for six years now... which is (embarrassingly) longer than any full-time job I've ever had and most of my relationships. Plenty of others have stuck around for one, two, three years at a stretch. And a good few have left and then returned, sometimes after a year's hiatus, simply because when they next needed the kind of work I do, my name was the one that came to mind.

Because I'm visible. I show up in the places my clients already are, semi-regularly, without making a whole song and dance about it. It's not a strategy so much as a habit, really.

Trust: the track record that precedes you

Exposure gets you noticed, but it's good ol' trust that gets you hired.

It's why cold pitching has stopped working the way it used to. There was a time when a well-timed cold email could land you a client outright... I got a good chunk of my early work that way. But that only worked because competition was thinner and clients were more willing to bet on someone they'd never met.

That's not the landscape anymore. Now you have to send out a huge volume of cold pitches to land even one or two bites, because you're asking a total stranger to trust you sight unseen, which is a MUCH bigger ask than it seems.

Warm contacts skip that problem entirely, because the trust is already half-built. Earlier this year I lost a fairly chunky contract and had a sudden gap in my calendar. Instead of diving head-first into a job-board spiral, I spent two days reaching out to my existing network.

Within a week I'd not just replaced the work, I'd landed extra on top. The same thing happened the year before, when a client took their content in-house.

Reciprocity: giving before you ask

The last of the holy trinity is what makes the other two sustainable: reciprocity. It means giving something small, however small, before you ever ask for anything. That could be a helpful comment, a useful resource, ANYTHING. Nothing transactional, mind, we're not doing strings attached here.

This is what separates warm networking from cold pitching at its core, and it's why this story from inside my community still gets me every time: a freelancer got a message from a past client she hadn't spoken to in eight years. She hadn't chased them down or anything, but she HAD stayed a little more visible than usual, checked in every so often, and BAM... when the client eventually needed help, they reached right out.

The whole trinity, working together

None of these three things are particularly complicated. But it's the combination that does the heavy lifting: exposure gets you seen, trust gets you chosen, reciprocity keeps the door open after a project ends. Pull any one of them out and the system will very quickly collapse.

The freelancers who never seem to scramble for work AREN'T the lucky ones. They're the ones who've been running this trinity in the background for years, treating it as routine maintenance rather than a fire extinguisher they only reach for in an emergency.

Small, regular, human. Bish, bash, bosh.

As always, happy freelancing 🙂

Lizzie ✨

This week, we have another B2B freelancer from Australia.

Where are you based? Brisbane, Australia.

How long have you been freelancing? 1 year 10 months.

What do you do? Primarily a B2B copywriter, but I also dabble in B2C.

What's your revenue? $109,000 AUD.

This person freelances full time and this was their highest earning year.

How much did you take as a salary?

$57,000 AUD take home pay - I paid myself a more conservative (yet liveable) salary to build out a buffer for potential slow months in future.

How much did you pay in taxes?

~$17,000 AUD on income tax, ~$7,000 AUD on GST (this is collected on top of my normal rates).

What are your business expenses?

~$173 AUD per month - EOFY accounting services, subscriptions, web hosting, cafes, office supplies etc. I also traveled interstate to a conference.
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Do you contribute to a pension or invest?

$10,300 AUD (We are required by law to pay 12% to our superannuation).

Any personal money-management or cash flow tip you'd like to share with others?

Pay yourself less than you're forecasted so on slower months you don't have to stress as much (particularly if you're a new mortgage holder like me!). I run all my payroll and pay my quarterly BAS (tax) myself to save cash but have an accountant to take care of the end of year filings. Study your financial data and time spent on client work every couple of months to ensure your pricing is where it should be to achieve your desired salary.

We need more Freelance Money Diaries entries! I'm forever grateful to anyone who shares their finances with us (you can do it totally anonymously!).

Click the button below to do yours! of

As always, happy freelancing :)

Lizzie ✨

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