There are plenty of enjoyable ways to invest in a freelance business. You can redesign your website, finally get around to those new headshots, buy (or rent) the laptop you’ve been eyeing up for six months, or spend an unreasonable amount of time choosing a new font. You can go to conferences, join communities, take interesting courses and generally find lots of ways to make your business feel fresh and exciting.
Then there are the things that are much less fun, but probably matter just as much.
Recently, I’ve done two of them. I’ve signed up to the Copywriter’s Code and taken out professional indemnity insurance for Left Field. Neither is particularly thrilling. There was no exciting new branding involved, no particularly good stationery and certainly no reason to take a photograph for Instagram. But both felt like quite significant steps in taking my business seriously.
After more than 12 years of working in copywriting and content, that might sound slightly strange. Surely I should have sorted all of this out years ago?
Perhaps.
But I think there’s a difference between being experienced at what you do and consciously thinking about what it means to operate as a professional business.
The Copywriter’s Code
The Copywriter’s Code is a set of professional standards created by ProCopywriters, the Alliance of Commercial Writers. By signing up, copywriters commit to a Code of Conduct and Code of Practice covering areas such as professional behaviour, client relationships, confidentiality and quality of work.
There is also a commitment to continuing professional development, with members expected to complete 20 hours of CPD each year, including five hours of structured learning. I imagine I’ll be covering this in my monthly freelance review.
I like the fact that it covers considerably more than the words themselves. It’s easy to think of copywriting as a fairly simple transaction: a client gives you a brief, you write some words and they pay you for them.
In reality, professional copywriting involves a lot more judgement than that. You are handling somebody else’s business information, making recommendations, interpreting their objectives and often becoming part of their wider marketing operation. I’ve noticed that my decision-making processes are a lot more refined and considered when I’m doing work for a client, versus when I’m throwing something up on my own website.
The longer I’ve worked in the industry, the more I’ve realised that being good at writing is only one part of being good at the job. You need to communicate clearly, understand your responsibilities, know where your expertise ends, manage expectations and keep learning as the industry changes around you. You also need to be able to tell a client when something isn’t quite right, rather than simply producing whatever you’ve been asked for because that’s what appeared in the brief.
That’s one of the reasons signing up to the Code appealed to me. I’m not particularly interested in collecting another badge or adding another logo to my website. I’m interested in having a professional framework that reflects the way I want to work.
And then there’s insurance
Professional indemnity insurance is considerably less intellectually interesting, but it belongs in the same conversation.
As a freelance copywriter, it’s tempting to think of insurance as something that applies to businesses doing more obviously risky things. If you’re a builder, you have tools and scaffolding. If you’re a photographer, you have expensive equipment. If you’re running a shop, you have premises and stock. I spend most of my working day sitting at a laptop, so it can be tempting to assume that there isn’t much that could go wrong.
Of course, the fact that the work happens on a laptop doesn’t mean it carries no professional risk. Clients hire me because they expect me to bring expertise to their business, whether I’m writing website copy, creating content, working on SEO, developing an email strategy or advising them on what they should be communicating.
Professional indemnity insurance is designed to provide cover for certain claims arising from professional mistakes, negligence or advice that causes a client financial loss. The precise cover depends on the policy and circumstances. This is why it’s important to understand what you’re actually buying, rather than treating insurance as a magic shield against anything that could possibly go wrong.
I bought my business insurance through Simply Business, and professional indemnity insurance was one of the things I wanted to have in place as Left Field continues to develop. It isn’t the sort of purchase that makes you feel particularly entrepreneurial, but there was something reassuring about finally ticking it off the list.
I’d put it in the same mental category as sorting out proper contracts or getting on top of your bookkeeping. You don’t necessarily notice the benefit of having these things in place every day. You notice it when you need them.
My experience with Simply Business
Before I started building my quote, I expected the process to be painful and drawn out. I was also preparing for my cover to be way outside of my budget. So I was pleasantly surprised when Simply Business made the process, well, simple.
I filled in a short form. They gave me some quotes. And then I selected the coverage that worked for me. Overall, it took about 15 minutes, and then I felt a weight lifting off my shoulders.
If you use my referral link, you’ll get a £25 voucher to use on Amazon, John Lewis or M&S. And yes, you can use the M&S card in the food hall. So that’ll be quid’s worth of Percy Pigs and a Colin the Caterpillar Cake, I assume?
The difference between freelancing and running a business
I think this is the bit that has been interesting for me.
There is a version of freelancing that can feel quite informal. You have a laptop, some clients, a website and a collection of invoices that need sending. You might call yourself a freelancer because that’s the simplest way to explain what you do, even when you’ve been doing it for years.
But there comes a point when it starts to make sense to think of what you’re doing as a business rather than simply a way of working.
For me, that doesn’t mean trying to make Left Field look like a traditional agency. I’m not interested in building a team for the sake of it, creating layers of management or turning a business I enjoy into something that needs to grow indefinitely. Most importantly, I want to continue doing the work that brings me joy, and that doesn’t include managing a team or managing project milestones.
I want to keep the parts of freelancing that I value: autonomy, flexibility, interesting work and the ability to build my working life around the rest of my life.
Taking the business seriously doesn’t have to mean making it bigger. It can simply mean making it more considered.
That might mean having clearer processes, understanding your finances properly, being more selective about clients, continuing to develop your skills or putting sensible protection in place. None of those things fundamentally changes the kind of business you have. They just make the foundations underneath it a little stronger.
The boring stuff matters
There’s a slightly romantic version of self-employment that focuses on the freedom. Working from home, taking your dog for a walk at lunchtime, heading to the gym when you want, choosing your own hours and being able to decide what your working week looks like are all genuine benefits of freelancing. They are also the bits that are easy to talk about.
The less glamorous side involves invoices, contracts, tax returns, data protection, insurance, professional development and occasionally spending an afternoon reading the small print of something you would much rather ignore.
But I don’t think those things are separate from the enjoyable parts of running a freelance business. They’re what allow you to enjoy those parts with a little more confidence.
That’s probably why signing up to the Copywriter’s Code and taking out professional indemnity insurance have felt more significant than I expected. Neither represents a dramatic change to the way I work. I’m still going to spend most of my time writing, thinking about content and helping clients communicate more effectively. I haven’t suddenly become a Serious Corporate Businesswoman™ because I now have an insurance policy.
What has changed is the way I think about the business behind the work.
After 12 years, it feels useful to acknowledge that Left Field isn’t just a collection of projects I happen to work on. It is a professional business, and I have a responsibility to look after it accordingly.
Some of that will be exciting. Some of it will involve good ideas, interesting clients and work I’m proud of. Some of it will involve learning new things and figuring out where I want the business to go next.
And some of it will involve insurance.
Apparently, this is what adulting looks like.
