workshops

The Pros and Cons of Hybrid Freelancing

Is there a word for people who are both employed and self-employed? There's a group of us who work the majority of our time in a normal job and also do freelance work in the remaining time: I'm going to call us Hybrid Freelancers, for want of a better term. I love being a hybrid freelancer, and a new change has got me reflecting on the pros and cons.

Today I start a new regime of compressed hours: I'm now doing my 90% FTE hours over 4 days rather than 4.5. I reduced my hours to 90% 12 years ago when I first started doing freelance training & workshops as well as my regular day-job at the University of York, and it has worked really well - taking either a day each fortnight, or half a day each week since Covid hit and things moved online, to prepare and run training sessions.

I literally never run the same session the same way twice. I will always, always revise my materials in some way before each session, either to tailor them to the sector or the organisation, or update them with new information, or just tweak them based on something which went well or less well the previous time I ran it. Up until now, I’ve tended to do that at the end of my regular working day, and the morning of the workshops – 45 minutes here, an hour there, and the materials are updated and ready to go.

Just under a year ago I changed roles at York and became a Faculty Engagement Manager, and I’ve found the new position to be much more intense and to take up a lot more emotional energy than my old one. I’ve noticed I’d get to 5pm or so and simply be too knackered to change gear completely and work on freelance materials, so I’ve found myself working at the weekends or evenings occasionally to prep for workshops - something I absolutely do NOT wish to be doing.

As a result of this, I’ve made the change to compress my hours. 5 days compressed across 4 has always been a mystery to me – the days seem so long I don’t get how people manage it… But to fit less than 4 additional hours into 4 working days, and then have a day off a week, seems very doable. It will mean on a regular workshop day where I run something online from 10am – 1pm, I will have the afternoon completely free to prep the NEXT workshop after that, and so on and so on. I think this will really help.

It also means I can potentially take on more freelance work, although by some miracle I have almost always had the same amount of demand for freelance work as I have time do it in, and I don’t expect demand to double just because my availability has! But hey, if you’re reading this and wondering if I can fit in a larger 2-day workshop or whatever, the answer is, yes, by all means get in touch…

Anyway, one of the cons of being a hybrid freelancer is also one of the pros: dividing your brain in two. On the one hand, the con is that it can be hard to switch gears and fit those two different worlds into a reasonable number of working hours. One the other hand, the pro is that both worlds benefit each other: I’m better at my day-job because I learn so much from my freelance work, and my freelance work is anchored in the reality of what is achievable in a library, because I work in one…

What else is there in the pro column, and does it outweigh the con column? First of all I’m going to talk about money. Even though I *know* it’s better when we’re open about financial matters when it comes to jobs, I still feel awkward and gauche! But here we go, anyway.

The Cons of hybrid freelancing

Part of your income is not guaranteed. I’m starting with the obvious one – for 10% of my time I’m relying on generating work, and if I don’t get any work I don’t get any salary. And of course if I’m ill I don’t get sick pay. This is inherently stressful, although much less so as a hybrid than as a full freelancer. On the upside, if you DO get work, it generally pays better than the day-job: my annual income is greater than if I was 1.0 FTE in my day-job.

Continuing on the subject of financial matters, you’re paying less into your pension. You can of course supplement your day-job pension with a private pension if you choose to, but you won’t get any sort of employer-matching type offer. You also have to get good at guessing what your tax bill will be, and putting aside that amount, because you’re taxed annually rather than at-source on your freelance income.

Here’s a tricky one: what does being a hybrid freelancer do for your reputation at your place of work? I’ve heard ‘oh they’re never there, really’ about people in other libraries who also do freelance work: I really, really hope my colleagues at York have never said that about me! Of course, I wouldn’t know if they did. What I do know, however, is I put absolutely everything into my day-job: I make sure I personally make a difference not just to the library but the actual student experience, and I hope this ensures no one ever thinks I see the day-job as lesser in any way to the freelancing.

The Pros of Hybrid Freelancing

I don’t want to be cheesy but the main pro is the people. As a freelancer I’ve run over 300 workshops across four continents (five if you count working online!) and I must have spoken to getting on for 10,000 people across that time: it is an absolute privilege to interact with so many professionals in my field and others, and to get so many different perspectives and experiences shared with me. It makes me better at both my jobs and it helps me understand the world from viewpoints other than my own, which is especially important as a cis, white, straight male.

The work itself is incredibly rewarding. I can only speak as a trainer, but I completely love it – working with engaged professionals who want to learn and share ideas and really get something out of the workshops. I’ve met people years later who’ve told me in detail about how they implemented ideas I’d given them in workshops and that is an uncomplicatedly brilliant feeling!

You get to travel, without travel becoming the only thing you do. I’ve had amazing opportunities thanks to freelancing, to visit South Africa and New Zealand and Australia and all sorts of places in Europe, which I’ve loved. But, I’ve also turned down a lot of overseas trips because they didn’t work for my family - as a ‘hybrid’ I can say no to things, but if I was fully freelance I may well have felt like I had to take on the trips to make ends meet.

Your worklife is inherently varied. I stayed in my previous job (Academic Liaison Librarian) for 13 years, which is a long time. Mainly it was because I hadn’t found a job I wanted to do more, but a big reason I didn’t get itchy feet was because I had constant professional *variety* and change in my freelance life.

All in all I’d say to anyone considering going freelance, try the hybrid system first to see if it suits you – the additional security it provides is really beneficial, especially when you’re first starting out!

So you want to be a library freelancer?

10 years ago today I did my first ever freelance work. It was for the Latvian Ministry of Culture (of all people!) and within 12 months I’d run workshops for the Bodleian, then UKeIG, then the British Library, all of whom I still run workshops for a decade later, and I was off. I went down to 90% in my day-job and started doing a day of freelancing a fortnight, and I’ve now done over 270 workshops in 16 countries for 78 different organisations.

I absolutely love it. A decade of doing it is as good an excuse as any to write about it so for anyone who’s interested here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

The freelance work benefits the day-job, and having a day job benefits the freelance work

I am constantly bringing to my day job things I’ve learned doing freelance work. The analytics apps my library uses for social media, the PowerPoint techniques used to create our Induction slide decks, the campaign structure we use for our marketing - all of these were researched / developed for training and then adapted for my work place. There’s no better way to keep on top of new developments in your field than to have to know enough about them to be able to train others! So for example, when it comes time to make a video for the library there’s several apps or programmes I know how to use - because in order to include something in a workshop I always have to have used properly it myself.

It works both ways though; the day job feeds into the workshops. It grounds me in the reality of working in libraries with all the constraints that involves. Feedback I get a lot after workshops is ‘it’s so nice to have someone talk about marketing who actually works in our industry so knows what we can and can’t do’. Working in a library 4.5 days a week is extremely useful for the training that happens in the other half day.

The creation-to-delivery ratio is bonkers and not in a good way

I have a selection of workshop outlines which I adapt for each session. There’s three broad categories - strategic marketing, social media, and presentation skills - with variations. Each of those took hours and hours and HOURS to create, and then I usually spend an hour or two tweaking content and making improvements for each workshop.

Sometimes people will ask me to run training on a topic I’ve not done before, and I almost always say no - because to make 3 hours’ of content for a half-day workshop takes at least 12 hours. Planning structure, outcomes, creating slides, planning tasks and activities, writing the booklet - there’s at least a 4:1 ratio of creation to delivery. So if you take on a workshop or training gig, make sure you book in a LOT of prep time if it’s something you’ve not done a version of before.

That said, I always tweak the sessions. I’ve almost never delivered the same set of slides twice - there are always new ideas or improvements to incorporate. Sometimes I get people coming - deliberately! - to versions of sessions they’ve attended with me before, and in those cases I’m always relieved that there’ll be new content for them…

It’s lovely to build relationships over many years. One of the things I’m most proud of is that 39 of the organisations I’ve worked with have invited me back!

The orgs I've delivered most sessions for

My relationships with the Bodleian, LIEM, the British Library, NEFLIN, PiCS and UKeIG go back years and years now, I really value that. And speaking of relationships…

The best thing about librarianship is librarians

Libraries are great, but the people who work in them are better… The community is certainly not without its issues, but in general I find it to be supportive and great at sharing. Especially in the age of zoom workshops, one of the things I love is how much knowledge the participants share with each other - everyone, including me, learns from everyone else.

One of the very best things about freelance work has been the opportunity to travel. Four of the countries below I have only worked in virtually, but the rest I’ve been fortunate enough to visit for work, and librarians are fantastic the world over.

Workshops by audience location (excluding England)

(Includes online)

Flexibility and interaction are everything

Interaction is what makes workshops feel alive and exciting. An audience full of questions and comments is just the greatest thing, and as a trainer I thrive off the energy that comes with it - and it’s lovely to know the workshop is really covering everyone’s specific needs because we’re discussing them. Sometimes groups really have to be convinced that you want interactivity, so re-emphasise it a few times both out loud and on the screen with specific prompts. I’ve done 144 in-person sessions and 128 online - the Chat is absolutely brilliant in online sessions, and I really enjoy getting to hear even more from delegates - tips, advice, examples, questions - than I do face-to-face.

Flexibility is absolutely essential for long training sessions. A session running from 10am - 4:30pm has so much potential to be elastic in terms of timings, so it’s worth being ready to change things on the fly. I usually put in more slides than I think I’ll need, then go into the slide-deck and hide material as I go along depending on how much discussion there is and what people want to focus on - then share the fuller version of the slides with delegates afterwards so they can still see the extra content if they’re interested.

You do not have to do things the way you’ve seen them done before

I can’t stress enough how it’s worth starting with a completely clean slate when building a training session. You don’t need to use post-its, or break-out rooms, or group discussion and a nominated person feeding back, just because they all get used a lot. You can, of course! But choose each activity because it best suits the work you’re doing and the delegates in that moment, rather than because it’s the sort of thing that normally happens...

I’m genuinely honoured to have worked with all these organisations below. If you’ve ever come along to a workshop thank you so much for attending, and if you asked questions or made comments thank you for that (and if you didn’t that’s fine too!), and I really hope you found it useful. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next decade brings.


If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! And by the way, the Instagram series that was previously running on this blog in 2022 WILL return next time I post - we’ll be talking about Stories: what they are, why they’re important, and ideas for how to use them well…

Upcoming presentation skills workshops and library marketing training

Just a quick post to say here's the current list of open workshops I'm doing this year - if you want to see if I'm doing something at your organisation specifically then the full listing is on the Upcoming Events page, but below are the non-in-house events currently in the diary. Hope to see you at one of them!

You can see a whole load of feedback from previous workshops via the Training page.

How the terrible fonts on my website led me to New Zealand...

Every so often I will search twitter for the URL of this website. I recommend doing this - you can see what people are saying when they link to your site, what people respond most to, sometimes what they don't like. Occasionally I'll reply with more information if appropriate.

Maybe twice a year I'll run a similar search for www.librarymarketingtoolkit.com, and it was doing this that led me to discover the following tweet:

LIANZA is the Association for Library and Information Professionals in New Zealand. I replied to say 'you don't like the font..?' and someone else joined to say how much they ALSO didn't like the font! I got some useful feedback on the font you're looking at now on this site, too - so thanks to Seonaid, they've since been tweaked! And the Toolkit website was completely overhauled in terms of visual style, as a result of that chat.

Anyhow, Ines on the LIANZA account and I got talking, which resulted in this:

(I've mentioned before that although I work part time and make part of my living through workshops, I don't ask money for conference talks apart from expenses.) This led to an email exchange and to cut a long story short (is that the most misused phrase ever? I've basically let the long story run its course here, apologies...) I'm delivering a keynote at the annual LIANZA conference in November. I'm more excited about it than possibly anything I've ever done professionally! I will be setting out a library communication manifesto in my talk.

The other keynotes include Justin Hoenke, who I can't wait to meet in person after we worked together on Buy India a Library. I also can't wait to hear Kim Tairi speak. The whole programme looks ace. I also get to be a 'human book' which I've not done before...

For anyone interested I gush a bit more about NZ in an interview for LIANZA's Library Life magazine (PDF).

Digital Marketing Workshop, Wellington, November 12th

While I'm out there I'm also running a workshop for PiCS, for whom I also run workshops in Australia every two years. If you're interested there's more info including booking here.

It's a really fun course - we dip into absolutely loads of tools which help libraries (and library services) communicate. Every single thing we cover is useful - they solve existing problems - relatively straightforward to use, free, and immediately available. This is not about the future of libraries or tech just on the horizon. It's about things you can do the minute you get back to your desk.

We'll cover online publishing (including Prezi and Sway), Geolocation and Augmented Reality, Marketing with Video, Measuring Impact on Social Media, and various other smaller topics.

Some feedback from recent UK versions of this course:

“Very up to date - thanks - very useful, practical and relevant course - I’m brimming with ideas”

”So much of it was useful... really easy tools to use and could results in some quick wins for us. Tips on blogging were useful too and hopefully will inspire us to actually start one. Augmented reality bit was fascinating - lots of potential there”

”I thought this course was excellent, one of the best courses I have attended at the BL... ALL the content was useful - Ned was excellent in really understanding the BL collections and needs and shaping the course appropriately. I have already recommended this course to colleagues!”

“This has been a fantastic course - I have learnt so much and gained more confidence around a number of digital marketing tools and how to use them effectively. Ned’s knowledge and brilliant presentation style is great and kept me hooked for the whole day. Everything has been amazing”
— UKeIG, NHS, British Library

So if you're in New Zealand it would be great to see you there! LIANZA attendees get a reduced rate, too...

 

 

Making your message stick - presentation skills for information professionals

On Tuesday the 12th of November I'm running a workshop on presentation skills in London. So many of us have to do presentations now, and it makes a big difference if you feel confident about it, and know some tips and tricks to make presenting easier and more effective. I'm really looking forward to it - it's the first time of doing this outside the British Library, where it's gone down really well. We'll be covering how to make lovely PowerPoints (even if you have to use a dreaded template), how to make your audience remember the things YOU want them to, tips for presenting itself, an introduction to Prezi and a bunch of other stuff too. You can read some of the kinds of things we'll be talking about in this 10 non-standard tips for public speaking post  and this presentation on making presentations...

It's hands-on, at PCs. The details, including a booking form, are here.

UKeIG website picture

One of my favourite ever pieces of feedback came for this course (it was unsolicited, too):

What I enjoyed so much about the presentation workshop:

 1.      Expertise in the subject matter

2.      Relevant and highly useful information: presented and practiced

3.      Clear and engaging presentation style

4.      Professionalism with a great sense of humour, no hidden agenda

5.      Dedication to collaborative professional development, to high standards, to excellence

... so I promise it'll be good! :) Hope to see you there.

Ned