12 lessons from my first 12 months of freelancing full-time

Going freelance teaches you more about yourself than any job ever could. I've just hit my one year mark as a full time freelance web designer, and can confidently say I've felt every emotion possible about this journey. It's been exciting, overwhelming, scary, exhilarating all at one. And always intense.

Here are the top 12 lessons I've learned:

1. I'm really glad I had experience first. Having 10 years in corporate behind me genuinely helped. I've had to learn so much, but already having skills in areas like stakeholder management, presenting, strategy, has definitely stopped me from drowning. This stuff isn't easy to learn solo. Things like social media and self-marketing still trip me up, but they feel learnable. And it's less overwhelming having the 'to learn' list be a bit shorter.

2. You're never just your job title. I had visions of my days being filled with web design and strategy sessions. Not realising just how much time all the business stuff takes. I'm also a salesperson, a marketer, a project manager, and even an accountant sometimes (even though my brother officially does my accounting, thank God, but I still had to figure out what the terms he uses mean).

3. Referrals beat any fancy marketing strategy. Doing a genuinely good job and getting referrals from happy clients has worked better for me than any Instagram post ever could. The best clients I've landed came from a friend of a past client who was impressed enough to recommend me.

4. The internet lies about freelancing. Not every freelancer is making six or seven figures, despite what their Instagram bio says. It's easy to feel inadequate scrolling social media, but remember that people only share their wins, not their dry spells or the projects that completely flopped. Comparison will mess you up if you let it.

5. Switching off is way harder than I expected. There hasn't been a single day this past year that I haven't thought about work. I'm literally writing this at 11 pm on the bank holiday weekend because I can't switch off. Freelance is tricky because the harder you work, the more you earn. So stopping feels like losing money. And there's quite simply always something else to do.

6. Keep hobbies you don't monetise. When you start making money from your skillset, it's easy to fall down a whole of wanting to monetise everything. Writing, graphic design, social media. I'd start doing something I enjoy to switch off, like drawing, and end up thinking about how I could add it to my services list. It became exhausting. Now I consciously choose hobbies like running and reading, that can't become side hustles, and use these to help me de-stress. It feels good to have something that stays purely enjoyable.

7. I'm proud of sticking it out. Freelancing can be brutally hard. I've spoken to my boyfriend about quitting multiple times and drained my savings more than I'd planned for. But I didn't quit. The fact that I can see a future forming out of something I built myself feels genuinely amazing. And with each week that passes I feel more confident about this being a forever career option.

8. Flexibility is amazing, but tricky. Choosing your own hours is incredible, but it's easy to overdo it. And I've swung both ways with this. Last year, in hindsight I was too relaxed, and so didn't make enough money. This year, I've been too rigid. I've felt overworked and have realised I've lost the freedom I moved to freelancing for. For me, mostly sticking to a 9-6 routine, with some guilt-free flexibility sprinkled in, hits the sweet spot.

9. Be wary of all the online courses. The internet is full of freelancers selling courses and advice. But from my experience, a lot of the advice you could get from a 4 figure course is free on YouTube or can be answered quickly by a quick Google search. Most stuff sold online is not as groundbreaking as advertised. So be selective about courses that prioritise specific skills you need to improve.

10. Pricing is about confidence as much as money. Figuring out what to charge was harder emotionally than practically. It's easy advice to just "charge more to earn more", but I found it really hard to stand firm by 'higher' prices and found the whole thing awkward. Raising your prices is about acknowledging that yes, you are actually good at this. And this was definitely a confidence piece for me.

11. It's okay to say no to a request. Not every opportunity or project will align with your skills or goals. Turning down work felt irresponsible at first and I didn't often say no. But that then took time away from me doing projects that helped advance my own business. So now I've learned to be selective, and to focus on projects that genuinely move me forward or teach me something valuable.

12. Celebrate your own wins! Freelancing can be lonely. There's no boss to say, "Great job," or colleagues to celebrate with you. So I started marking small wins myself and making sure I truly acknowledge and celebrate that. Be it landing a new client or finishing a tricky project. Mainly this is just buying myself a coffee, making myself a nicer lunch or having a wine in the evening. But in the absence of office pizza parties, solo celebrations are important.

Are you also freelancing or running your own business? I'd love to hear about your own freelance lessons!

And as always, if you're looking for a website design for your business, then you know where to find me.

A snippet into the BTS of my freelance life. Lots of work, powered by coffee and sweet treats: