Anyone who’s been a freelancer for more than a few weeks knows that there’s much more to the job than simply writing, photographing, designing, or whatever sort of “ing” you’ve got going on these days. The administrative side of the freelancing is big, and as I’ve discovered over the past few months, it only gets bigger when your business does.

In fact, I’d say that I am now focusing about 75 percent of my work time on administrative work. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not complaining. In fact, during the big end-of-the-year meeting Lorna and I had last week, one of my goals was to be doing just that: about three-fourths admin and one-fourth writing (and only the topics of my choosing, to boot). It’s not that I don’t like the writing. I do. It’s just that doing more administrative work is pretty much the result of having a big client roster and making lots of money. And that stuff is good.

Of all the administrative tasks I do, one of my least favorite is client tracking. It’s certainly not the most complicated thing that needs to be done, but for some reason, it always ends up at the bottom of my to-do list. I have theories as to why:

1. Lorna has her own clients, I have my own clients, and we have clients we share. I’m not always in communication with those Lorna has, so I sometimes have to be all nag-gy and irritating with her in order to keep everything straight.
2. We get new clients almost every day. Now, that might seem like a bit of an overstatement, but it’s not. Our VA spends virtually all of her time bidding on jobs for us. Since she’s been at it for a few months now (and the holiday season is finally over) we’re really starting to see responses to these bids. That means that there are new clients, new potential clients, existing clients, and old clients to juggle simultaneously.
3. The bidding sites are not always freelancer-friendly. Guru, for example, keeps all employer information confidential. This means that we have three or four clients who pop up under the name of None. Now, once we get to know these businesses, we get access to things like their company names, websites, and email addresses (though not always), but for the time being, we’re seriously juggling three Nones.

In order to keep all this information straight, it’s important to have a continually updated list of clients. We find it best to divide them into the four categories outlined above:

Old Clients – These are the people who have used your services in the past. They may not have made any requests in awhile, but it’s still a good idea to drop them a line (or company-branded notecard) every few months to let them know that you still exist. This is a good time to offer some sort of discount for repeat business, as well.

Existing Clients – These are the people you’re working for right now. Keeping them in an organized list is the only way to make sure you know what is due, when it is due, when to send an invoice, and how much money might be past due. With tax season looming, this is even more important, since Uncle Sam might want to know who they are, too.

Potential New Clients – These are the people who may be considering you versus another freelancer or who are otherwise perched on the fence. This list needs to stay current because a lack of follow through is often the primary reason why they look elsewhere for their business needs. Persistence pays.

New Clients – We keep new clients separate from existing clients because we are unsure of them at the moment. A new business relationship is risky for both sides, and we never know for sure if we want to stay working for a particular client for longer than the original project. Keeping them in their own category is a good way to make sure you’re comfortable before you count them as a “regular.”

This may seem a little excessive to freelancers who only have one or two clients right now, but I can’t stress enough the importance of getting into a habit of keeping good records. In the upcoming months, you may grow or you may not, but at least you’ll be prepared in case things suddenly start to explode.

So, I’m actually on the road from Helena, Montana (where we spent Christmas) to Lewiston, Idaho (where we’re seeing some friends for the night), and we’ve found ourselves in an interesting position. It is snowing like crazy, and we’re on a winding mountain road. There is a black river running along the south side of the road, and it’s swollen with white and green ice. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that I have had this exact nightmare, and it hasn’t ended well any of the other times.

Also, I just finally got the baby to fall asleep in the car seat, when she should have been asleep over an hour ago. I’ve been riding in the backseat with her, trying not to audibly suck the air between my teeth when I feel the tires slide out from under us. Still, we’re keeping pretty cool heads here in the car and have managed not to let the particularly tense situation get to us.

A short time ago, we came across a pickup truck that had slid off the road and was stuck halfway in the ditch. Fortunately, they slid off the north side of the old highway, or I’ll bet it would have been even more terrifying for the dad and his young daughter. While there was this little part of me that wanted to just keep going, my husband and I both grew up in Montana, and we know the protocol. You always stop and offer to help.

So, we chained their pickup to our old Bronco and attempted to pull them out. No dice. In the meantime, another pickup came along. Apparently he grew up in the country, too, because he also stopped. In the end, we chained the stuck vehicle to his, chained his to ours, and with all three of us accelerating at once, we were able to inch our way back onto the road, with those of us who stopped to help facing the wrong way.

With a “thanks so much,” the gentleman got him and his daughter into their now unstuck vehicle and set off on his merry way. The other guy and my husband both got their rigs turned around, and now the three vehicles are more or less caravanning down the mountainside. It’s grown dark, and it’s actually kind of reassuring to have those two sets of taillights to follow through the driving snow.

What does all of this have to do with freelancing? Well, it reminded me of how so many freelancers make the time to help one another. Only a year ago, Tamara and I were just warming up to the idea of subcontracting work from other freelancers who had more than they could handle. After we’d given it a try, we discovered that it was a great opportunity for us. Now, we’re at a point where we have been able to outsource work to other up-and-coming freelancers.

We’re not the biggest freelance agency out there, but we are growing; and part of the reason is because other freelancers were generous enough to offer us both guidance and paying jobs. In turn, we hope we’ve been able to offer some guidance with this blog, as well as a few paying jobs to the freelancers we know.

To the following, we’d like to say “thanks so much” for being a part of this process in the last year:

• Wendy Piersall and Sparkplugging - We’ve had some great experiences this year as a result of being a part of this awesome group of work-at-home professionals.
• Billie Gaura and Rainmaker Marketing - Billie’s dones some cool stuff for us, but we’re especially excited about the fact that every time we hire her, she hires us right back!
• Kelly McCausey and her various endeavors - This woman has more good ideas than you would believe.
• Selene Bowlby and iDesign Studios - She’s an awesome person to have in your corner.
• James Chartrand & Harry McLeod and Men with Pens - They’re just as hair-brained as we are, and it sure keeps things fun.
• Genesis Davies from At Home Mom Blog - She was the first Freelance Parent reader we got to hire, but certainly not the last!
• Michelle Nguyen from Mommy Misadventures - She’s a newer addition to our roster and is also a Freelance Parent reader.
• Laurie Mapp and Halo Secretarial - Thanks for helping us fulfill our dream of having a “personal assistant,” even if you don’t pick our kids up from school (now that would be a communte).

And to all the rest of you who have shared your thoughts and ideas with us, as well as your time and your talent. Here’s to another incredible year!

For Christmas, my daughter got me a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution. Really, her daddy got it for me, but he softened the blow by telling me it was from my eleven-month old. You see, she has some pretty serious trouble falling asleep. She positively hates it, and the result is a lot of late night rocking and nursing on my part. Quite honestly, it doesn’t bother me a whole lot, but it drives my husband batty for some reason.

For me, the alternative is much worse. I will freely admit that I’m just not a “cry it out” mom. Both Tamara and I are pretty sensitive to our babies’ needs and desires. We both also have spines of jelly when it comes to hearing our little ones cry. Tamara’s recently started letting Evil Mommy out to play, but we both prefer to keep our babies’ discomfort to a minimum. In some ways, it may be self preservation, as the piteous cries of the fruit of our loins is enough to drive either one of us to tears ourselves.

I’ve mentioned before that our freelance business is a lot like a child to us. We’ve nurtured it and guided it and watched it grow over the last year and a half. Because of our need to keep our little baby freelance company from suffering any undue discomfort, we’ve been patient and moved pretty slowly. You could say that we’ve been rather cautious moving forward in an effort to protect our toddling company and to minimize our own discomfort as well.

You know what? I think that being so wary and guarded has made a huge difference in what we have been able to achieve. While it may have cost us a few dollars in the short term, I think it has really laid a much more stable foundation on which to build some long-term success. We haven’t raced forward with the business, yet it has been steadily growing since the agency was started in 2007.
They say that slow and steady wins the race, and we’ve found it to be an approach that fits our temperaments.

Some of the choices we’ve made that illustrate this approach include:

• During the first year, we raised our rates in accordance with our own self confidence. Rather than coming out of the chute asking for something that we didn’t really feel we deserved (even if we did deserve it), we started with what we could stomach and grew from there. The key, of course, is that we did raise our rates so that we are now able to earn a freelance income that is much more in line with what we probably should have been asking in the first place. Still, we rocked and nursed our business and avoided a lot of the fluttery frightened sensation that would have signaled that we were pushing harder than our baby was ready.

Several months ago, Tamara and I finally got business cards for the Berry-Brewer Freelance Agency. At the risk of sounding a little vain, I will tell you that we absolutely love our cards. We’ve mentioned before that the design was done by Billie Gaura of Rainmaker Marketing, and we <3 her very much. Well, I have even more love for her and those cards after this year’s holiday parties.

My husband, Baby Dot, and I were invited to some friends’ Christmas party this year, and we were very excited to go. We hadn’t seen them for some time, and their parties are always fun. Not only that, but they were totally keen on having us bring the baby, which made things a lot easier on us.

During the party, it was nonchalantly mentioned that one of the other guests was the publisher of a local magazine. “Oh my gosh,” I said to my host. “Do you know what I do?” Within moments, I had been introduced to the Editor-in-Chief and had exchanged one of my beautiful business cards for a sample copy of his gorgeous magazine. I was chirping on the inside to have been so fortunate to have gotten a little face time with the fellow.

The very next day I received an email from this Editor-in-Chief thanking me for the card and complimenting me on our company’s website (also done by Rainmaker, thank you very much). He wanted to run a story idea by me to see if I was interested. Boy, was I! By Monday night of the following week, I had done two phone interviews, learned a heap about the topic, and submitted a 1,110 word article. The Editor-in-Chief was so happy with the piece that he has asked me to turn it into a series running in the next three issues.

When I walked into the party, my agenda included reconnecting with some old friends and showing off my sweet baby girl. Thank goodness I had some of those business cards in my wallet.

The moral of the story: You’re always networking.

(By the way, if you want to read the first installment of the series, check out my article for Q View Northwest.)

I spent most of the last week in Montana where I was able to check email via my cell but not really able to have much more online interaction than that. That means that I have no idea what has been going on in the blogosphere.

But, I can guess.

Let’s see, it’s a few days after Christmas and a few days before New Year’s Eve. That means that people are doing two things on their blogs:

1. Reviewing the previous year
2. Making resolutions and setting goals for 2009

Personally, I think this is a great idea, and Tamara and I are getting set to do the same thing for our business. On Tuesday we will be having our second annual end-of-year/beginning-of-year meeting. Last year’s was a huge wake-up call during which we discovered that we were holding ourselves back and sabotaging our own success. All year long we have harkened back to that meeting with the ultimate lesson we learned: WORK HARD.

So, now I’ll be going back through my files from a year ago to find the questions we asked ourselves then and to revisit our answers. We’ll be pulling out the business plan and comparing our progress with the goals we set for ourselves when we stated this endeavor.

It promises to be an interesting learning experience, and you can bet we’ll be filling you all in on what we discover. In the meantime, does anyone have any specific end-of-year review processes that you use for your freelance business? If not, then you should definitely consider it. As I said, the process was incredibly important for us. It led to us going from earning several hundred dollars a month to earning more than $2,000 last January.

My daughter recently turned three. And I have a confession to make. Until last week, she still used a binky to go to sleep each night.

Feel free to chastise accordingly (goodness knows I’ve done it), but no matter how many times I tried to extricate the thing from the vice of her determination, I caved. She looked so pathetic with those big crocodile tears and shuddering breaths – all she wanted was a little bit of comfort to help her get through the night. So time and time again, I extended the deadline of its banishment and shouldered a little more mommy guilt.

Then, last week, I was in a bad mood. A. Bad. Mood. Work wasn’t going well, I was feeling deprived of caffeine, my husband was still in the midst of two full-time jobs, and I was just plain crabby. So when my daughter started to cry before bedtime because she couldn’t find her binky, I just told her, “Sorry. We got rid of them. You can’t have one anymore.”

She tried all her usual tactics: crying, begging, telling me she loves me. But I wasn’t budging. (Because in my house, when Mommy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.) So she gave up and went to bed. And slept sounder than she ever has before. Since then, she’s asked for it twice, given a little sigh when told “no,” and moved on.

What? It was that easy?

My husband has decided that Evil Mommy is really good at laying down the law in ways that Normal Mommy is not. Evil Mommy makes her daughter eat what’s served or nothing at all, she turns off the television with nary an apology in sight, and she doesn’t take any crap. She’s hardcore.

So, we’ve decided that, like the Hulk or Niki Sanders, I must learn to channel Evil Mommy when the situation calls for it rather than simply being prey to my emotions.

I like this idea, because I can’t help but think that Evil Mommy would be really good at certain parts of our business. Bill collecting, for example. We currently have about $1,000 in outstanding payments from several clients. Normal Tamara is not good about pushing them. She listens to apologies and takes them at face value, she offers much-too-generous time allowances, and she politely backs off. I get the sensation that Evil Tamara won’t take “no” for an answer. She’ll get her money, no matter who she has to threaten to get it.

She might come in handy at other times, as well. She’d be great at negotiations, hard-headed sales tactics, and responses to mean comments on our blogs. She’d get what she needs from the people she hires without feeling bad about it. I kind of like her.

And now that I’ve discovered her lurking deep inside, I’m excited to get to know her a little better. I think she’ll be a great asset to our team.

It’s been no secret here on Freelance Parent that Lorna and I are big fans of candid transparency. When we first started our freelancing adventure, we knew just about as much as anyone else approaching a writing career with nothing more than some solid writing experience and an ability to learn. Anything we needed to know, we researched and studied. We gained experience at our own pace, learning from our mistakes and keeping a sense of humor all the while.

And then we blogged about it.

The end result is that now, a year and a half later, we’ve got a really solid business, a loyal readership base (we love you guys!), and a very, very strong sense of accomplishment. Things were looking pretty good.

Until, of course, I decided to do the whole thing all over again by trying to make the leap into writing fiction. If you followed my NaNoWriMo experience, then you know I wrote an entire 104,000-word historical romance manuscript recently. I followed it up with exhausting revisions and rewrites, and am now looking at what it might take to get it published.

The path to publication is daunting - and it’s a process I know virtually nothing about. So anything I need to know, I’m researching and studying. I’m gaining experience at my own pace, learning from my mistakes (BIG time), and striving to keep a sense of humor.

Oh, and I’m blogging about it.

Romance This is to Freelance Parent as Frasier is to Cheers. It’s still got one of the stars of the show (namely: me) and the same general approach, but in an entirely different setting. From query letters and self-addressed stamped envelopes to literary agents and self-publication, I’m looking at it all. Heck - I started the thing less than a week ago, and already, I’ve tackled revisions, rejections, and yes, intense public humiliation.

I encourage everyone who’s interested in someday getting published or simply in the mood to watch as I flail around in the pool of the unwanted to head on over and take a look. Feel free to leave me comments, offer advice, or simply point and laugh. It promises to be an interesting ride.

So, if you’ve been keeping up with us this week, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about different ways to make sure that you have plenty of freelance business over the holidays. Here’s what we’ve talked about so far:

• Steady Customers Can Sustain Your Freelance Business during the Holidays
• Plan Ahead to Make Sure You are Busing Freelancing during the Holidays
• Try Something New to Revitalize Your Freelance Business during the Holidays

To bring this series to a close, though, I want to make one last suggestion.

Consider not working too much over the holidays!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a little break now and then, and what better reason to do so than because it’s cold outside, people keep offering you food, and you need to go shopping? Even though we’ve worked to make sure that we have enough to do during the holiday season, neither one of us intends to have too much on our plates during the week of Christmas. Don’t forget that the ability to control your schedule is one of the great things about freelancing.

If things get a little too quiet during the holidays, don’t let it worry you too much. There are plenty of reasons that it happens, and it’s very, very common. There’s a reason all the freelance blogs talk about “feast or famine.” Don’t let it discourage you.

Instead of getting down about the slowdown, take advantage of it. Enjoy your family. Enjoy the season. Have some eggnog…if you’re really stressed, add a little booze to it. This is the time of year when we really should take some time out to appreciate what we have. Maybe not being so busy with work can give us an opportunity to take a deep breath and do just that.

This week we’re looking at a variety of ways to make sure that your freelance business doesn’t fizzle during the holidays. We’ve talked about how having steady clients throughout the year can make a big difference as it draws to a close. We’ve also talked about how you can give clients a discount for booking in advance and thereby ensuring that you have projects on your calendar in December.

Another option for creating business at this time of year is to consider opening yourself up to new types of projects. Perhaps you’ve spent a lot of time this year writing SEO articles, and you feel kind of “safe” doing that. If your clients start to neglect their websites a bit this time of year, then the work might dry up. Why not look for other gigs that can utilize your skills. Look at job listings you would normally skim over. You might even find a new niche that really works for you. If not, you’ll at least open your options for work during the slower times.

If you normally focus on bigger projects, like books and info products, consider putting that knowledge to use by answering ads for article writing. This works the other way, too. If you usually write articles, why not consider bidding on an ebook? If you have experience proofreading websites, you might consider taking those skills to print media.

Basically, the idea is to step outside of your comfort zone a bit. That can be really hard to do, and we often need some sort of external motivation to give new things a try. Perhaps a holiday-induced slump in your freelance business is just the kick in the pants that you needed.

If you’ve been freelancing for long, you are probably all too familiar with the phrase “feast or famine.” Of course, that refers to the fact that it seems like freelance business is either a) booming or b) nonexistent at any given point in time. It feels like there’s never really a happy medium.

This week we’re addressing ways to help avoid the “famine” part of freelancing that often accompanies the holidays. Yesterday we talked about how setting your clients up on a regular schedule can be beneficial because the work will come in whether it’s the holidays or not. Today we have another suggestion that requires you to plan a little in advance. I’ll use myself as an example for this one.

Back at the end of October, I had an old client approach me about an info product he wanted to create. I’ve worked with this guy before and know that he isn’t the kind who needs everything yesterday, so I offered him a choice. I could get the project on my calendar and have it done for him within a couple of weeks.

Or, I could do it for him in December. For $150 less.

I know that some freelancers are good about planning their schedules out for a couple of months in advance, but I highly suspect that the majority of us do not work that way. In my experience, most clients don’t want to wait too long. Besides, I’m the kind of person who really likes to get things finished. It can be hard to have things floating out there in the future.

On the other hand, if I know that those things are set to happen at a time of year when I would normally have no income, then I’m willing to make the sacrifice. The client is thrilled because he got a great deal, and I’m happy because I absolutely know that I’m not going to go starving in December.

By the way, if you are one of those freelancers who plans your calendar out for a couple of months in advance, I would love to hear how you do that. I’m always open to learning new things, after all!