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The gap between deciding to go freelance and actually doing it is mostly filled with planning that turns out to be wrong. Not wrong in a catastrophic way, more wrong in the sense that the things you worried about aren’t the things that turn out to matter, and the things that catch you off guard are things you didn’t think to worry about.
This is normal. It doesn’t mean the planning was pointless. It means the first year is where you find out what your plan was missing.
The things nobody tells you before you start
Income is lumpy. You probably know this in theory, but living with it for the first time is different. A good month followed by a quiet month followed by another good month doesn’t average out emotionally the way it does on a spreadsheet. Managing your cash position carefully and keeping a buffer from the start is not overly cautious; it’s what makes the quiet months manageable.
Business development takes longer than expected to produce results. The conversations you have in month one tend to produce work in month three or four, not month two. If you wait until the pipeline is empty to start doing business development, you’ll always be behind. The freelancers who manage this well treat business development as a consistent weekly habit rather than something they do when they’re worried.
Isolation is a real thing. An in-house role gives you a team, informal conversation, and a sense of shared purpose that freelancing doesn’t. Some people find the independence energising. Others find the quiet of a home office harder than they expected. It’s worth thinking about this in advance and building some structure, a regular coworking day, a peer group, a former colleague you speak to regularly, rather than discovering it’s a problem six months in.
The practical setup that gets overlooked
Register as self-employed with HMRC as soon as you start. Get a separate business bank account. Set up a simple system for tracking income and expenses from day one, retrofitting this a year later when you’re trying to do your tax return is genuinely miserable. Get an accountant, at least for the first year. The cost is offset by the tax you won’t overpay.
Check what insurance you need. Professional indemnity insurance is standard for comms consultants. Public liability insurance is worth considering if you work on client sites.
What changes and what doesn’t
The work itself is often much the same. Comms strategy is comms strategy whether you’re employed or freelance. What changes is everything around the work: finding it, pricing it, invoicing for it, chasing payment, managing client relationships without institutional backing, and making decisions that used to be someone else’s problem.
Most people who go freelance from in-house roles are surprised by how much they enjoy it. Most are also surprised by how much admin there is.
A planner to work from
The first-year freelance planner covers the practical setup, financial planning, client tracking, and quarterly reviews in a single Excel workbook. Designed to be started before you go freelance, not after. Comes with a PDF reference version.
First-Year Freelance Planner
Editable Excel workbook with setup, financial planning, client tracker, and quarterly review tabs, plus a PDF reference version.