Even though you gave up a hire profile career for the benefit of your kids, being a freelance fashion designer is full of guilt and emotional labour. It takes a change of mindset to juggle being a parent and pursuing a sustainable creative business.
Freelance fashion designers are creative high achievers, working for well known brands yet being there for their kids and creative freedom is a big desire. 63% of all design students are women, but only 17% of women are in leadership roles. Being a freelance fashion designer creates an opportunity to be paid well, remain true to your creative DNA, and build a work life balance around those you love. However, unstructured freelancing is not a great business model and juggling kids and clients is mentally tough; being a working parent can create feelings of guilt, so there’s a constant desire to put your kids first. Looking after your own mind, body and soul often feels self indulgent.
Why freelance fashion designers fail.
Your ROI (return on investment) is high as a freelance fashion designer. The early days can be a whirlwind of cash in the bank and not much in the way of overheads and expenses. When you are busy you forget about marketing and then when it goes quiet you wonder how to market yourself effectively. It’s very easy to spend a lot of money and time on low cost ‘influencer’ marketing courses and free government training, yet with self study courses having a completion rate as low as 3-5% they have little or no impact. Time is money as a freelance fashion designer and you can see how wasting time on ill fitting courses can have a negative impact on your already busy work/life balance.
What happens when freelancers don’t invest in marketing.
At the start of your freelance journey everything is going well. You have a string of past colleagues who are referring business to you and you may have been lucky enough to secure a regular well paid freelance role from a former full time role which on the face of it pays way more whilst you watch your kids grow.
A flexible life creates a positive impact on mental health, yet when the referrals start to get fewer and the ones you do get are not fulfilling your creativity it can start to feel soul destroying. You can find yourself 10 years in wondering what went wrong. For women hitting their mid 40’s and suffering with often undiagnosed signs of perimenopause, it can make a huge negative impact on confidence. A cocktail of increasing demand from family life, the absence of a marketing strategy and hormonal changes felt in cognitive functions, often leads to stress, anxiety, burnout and in extreme cases depression.
Imposter Syndrome.
Even without perimenopause a dry spell in freelance work at midlife can lead you to doubt yourself and feel uncomfortable marketing your business as a freelance fashion designer. The findings of a report in 1978 to address doubts in performance led to what is now called imposter syndrome. Originally called the imposter phenomenon, it focused on high-achievers, who despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, believe that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise. In a National Study of 3000 Participants in 2018 it was found that the creative arts and design industry has the highest rate of imposter syndrome across all sectors, affecting nearly 87 per cent of respondents.
How to tell it’s time to invest in your marketing.
So, what are the signs that it’s time to move from a creative freelance career to a creative business owner. If you have years of experience with high profile clients but haven’t put your prices up in years it means you are continually having to put more time into your working week in order to achieve the same income; as you grow older your mind and body can’t function like your former self and it’s not sustainable. You notice that you are often told you are the expert, with clients looking to you to solve complex problems in a very specific niche, but you don’t feel like an expert.
Maybe you have gotten comfortable in a long term freelance role and you are a ‘permalancer’. Whilst this feels secure, you are not only likely to be breaking employment rules (IR35), but also feeling like an employee but with none of the benefits of sick pay, health insurance and redundancy payouts. It may be that you are simply unhappy with the clients you have and feeling stuck about what to do; you are too far into your creative freelance lifestyle to take a full time job and feel unemployable. You know you have so much more to give, but on your terms, because you’re at an age when you are looking at winding down to retirement, not taking on a fast paced full time role.
A Different Mindset
Despite all of this, what if you still feel guilty at the idea of investing into you and your freelance creative business to market yourself? When we spend money on a holiday or a car we know the result is tangible and we have evidence immediately. But long term what do these give your kids, your wellbeing, your quality of life? When you invest into private education for your kids career that feels absolutely fine, yet what about your own career? Creating a business that you love using your insane creative skills is an inspiring example to show your kids what is achievable for them in the future. A happy parent is one of the key components to a happy family; giving up the short term good for the long term great is simply a new mindset. Midlife can be a time to be rich in experience and an opportunity to create a freelance design business where you can say no to low paying work and make space for higher paying clients, so that you can spend more time doing the things you love, with those that matter.
