Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

Freelance

A Reflection on Freelancing and Some Advice

I will begin this post by saying: I no longer freelance full-time. For the past year, I have worked full-time with Traliant as their Senior eLearning Developer, and I love what I do. That being said, I do still freelance…just in a different way and for different reasons. 

Awhile ago, I wrote a post about my Freelance to Freedom, and because it’s been five years and a lot has changed, I thought that was as good a time as any to reflect on my freelance journey, my goals, and how I’ve transitioned my freelancing since then.

When I initially wrote that post, I had dabbled in freelancing, working various contracts, and considering making strategic moves, such as requesting reduced hours at my full-time job, securing contracts, and moving toward full-time freelance. Since then, my focus has shifted. I’ve learned:

  • First and foremost: SO MUCH
  • What level of freelance I’m comfortable with and uncomfortable with
  • What type of work I enjoy doing
  • What my overall goals are in relation to freelancing

Let’s break it down!

Levels of Freelancing Comfort

What initially began as me being unable to say no (to contracts) and winding up working both permanent full-time and full-time freelance gigs has allowed me to explore how I want to freelance. For me, I prefer to have a permanent full-time role, while being able to continue my side hustle with small projects.

  • It’s important to note that I have always been transparent with my full-time employers about my intentions and have sought approval before beginning employment. No one should be blindsided.
  • My proposition has always been ‘so long as the freelance role doesn’t impact my ability to get my regular work completed and is non-compete (working in similar subject matter lanes can feel icky, and you should go with your gut)’.

So for me, what was once ‘take every gig you can and just make time for it’ has turned into a much more strategic endeavour. This is because when I fast forward 5 years (and I’m sure 10/15/20 from now as well), I see that I have put a lot more value into my time and into my work-life balance.

I love freelance work because it keeps things fresh and ever-changing, but I also enjoy stability.

Another level of comfort I’ve found: working remotely. I do enjoy interacting with people on a daily basis, but for me that doesn’t mean it needs to occur within a traditional office space. I appreciate knowing that I can comfortably do my work from my home office, a cafe, a hospital, another country…wherever I want so long as there’s an internet connection. I love being location independent!

What Type of Work I Enjoy Doing

When I first started freelancing, I learned very quickly that I enjoyed working in an Instructional Design or Storyline Developer capacity. I am very good at both of those roles and I learned early on that I wanted to work smarter and not harder, so I chose freelance work that aligned with my skillset.

If you threw me into the full-time freelance pool again, I would still feel this way, and would still align the projects I worked on with my skillset. It makes sense. I fully recommend to anyone: promote the work that you would want to do again, because it’s what you will enjoy doing…and if you spend 40+ hours a week working, you should heed this one bit of advice, if only for your sanity. I’m a big supporter of investing in things that you will spend most of your time doing (work and sleep) – make those elements of your life as comfortable as you can.

What My Overall Goals Are in Relation to Freelancing

Initially my freelancing goal was ‘pay off my student debt’, then it was ‘make all of the money’, and now it is to foster relationships and invest in my professional development. How does that look for me now when it comes to freelancing?

As I mentioned before, I value my time and my work-life balance, so my freelancing is now focused less on more traditionally viewed ‘work’, such as Instructional Design or eLearning Development, and more on my own professional development and the professional development of others.

What I’ve really been passionate about for the last five or so years has been: Speaking. I love delivering sessions at conferences and providing training to others in the form of workshops and online courses (usually on topics of Instructional Design, eLearning, eLearning Development, etc.). I am very fortunate to have a career that allows me to do this, and the reason I see this as my preferred form of freelancing is because: 1 – it allows me to connect with colleagues and share what I’ve learned over the last 15 years of my professional life, and 2 – I have always been terrified of public speaking.

It’s a weird Catch-22 of ‘I like sharing’, but ‘I hate speaking’, and speaking at conferences and other events has allowed me to improve on a skillset of which I struggle. This is invaluable to me. So while I no longer freelance in the traditional sense of the word, this is my freelancing.

Last Words of Advice

Work outside of your comfort zone if you’d like, but make sure that it’s sustainable for you, your goals, and your desired work-life balance. If you want to do freelance full-time, there are strategic ways of executing this goal, so don’t work yourself to death – no one needs that kind of pressure. If you’d like to hear more about my freelancing insights, I’ll be delivering sessions on this topic at both ATD TechKnowledge 2020 and Learning Solutions 2020 (as well as some sessions and workshops in between).

Freelance Advice: Pricing Yourself Appropriately

One of the freelance questions I get asked most frequently is: How do I price my services? 

When going freelance or taking on contract projects, pricing yourself appropriately is critical. Your. Time. Is. Valuable. I’ve been on both sides: freelancing myself and hiring freelancers, so I feel like I can offer some advice in this arena. You can even take some of this advice and apply it to the “a prospective employer asked me ‘what is your salary expectation?’ – how do I respond?”

But first, a story…

When I first began freelancing it held a very simple goal: pay off my student debt faster. Kthx. And I did. And I learned a lot from my very first freelance gig. I went on a bid site (freelancer.com), bid on any job I thought I was even remotely qualified for, and won several contracts. One such contract was transcribing 40 hours of interviews for someone’s PhD research. I did this job for ONE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. WHAT?! Yeah. I had no idea what to price transcription services at. This was obviously a steal. This is a period of my life that was absolute agony for me. I’m not a quitter. I did the job. I hated the job. I learned that my time was valuable. #lifelessons. I now know that, and that will never transcribe anything ever again. Never.

Cool story. That was dumb. Now get on with the advice please.

Alright, so there are several things you want to consider when pricing your services:

  • What do you want to earn?
    • Be realistic; I initially based this annual value as what I was making at my first ID role
  • Consider the things you have to pay out, such as taxes, HST (if you’re Canadian), and health care
    • The biggest mistake I see people make is pricing their services too low and only finding out when they owe a bunch of $$$ to the CRA or IRS. It can be an expensive lesson to learn.
  • Do you want project based pricing? Hourly pricing? Salary?
    • Salary is self-explanatory, but you still need to factor in the things you’ll pay out to. Hourly pricing can be good if you’re unsure of how much time you spend doing each type of task you’ll be doing. Project-based pricing is typically higher, but if you do project-based pricing you may get into an underpaid pickle if it takes you longer to complete a project than what you had quoted.

For me, as I previously explained, I initially priced my services based on the hourly breakdown of my first ID salary. I then added to that. So, let’s do a simple example:

  • Starting rate: $20/hr
  • I set aside 35% of each project for taxes, and 15% for HST, so I would add those two things (50%) and then add that to my rate – so now I’m at $30/hr.
  • Then, I add 20% to that to put aside for healthcare – now we’re at $36/hr

Now, this takes a bit of research, but I recommend you start with your provincial/state/federal tax sites to identify how much you need to pay in to taxes based on certain tax brackets. It might suck to contribute more to your tax account than necessary, but at the end of the day, it’s always nice to not have to pay out all of your tax savings vs. owing more.

The other major things to consider is: What experience do you have? How long have you been doing certain types of jobs/roles? Where do you live? These factors all play a part in pricing yourself appropriately.

Pricing yourself can be incredibly intimidating, but I’ve learned that valuing myself accordingly and confidently negotiating my pricing has more often resulted in prospective employers not batting a lash versus balking at my pricing. And if you’re being fair with your prices and still encountering prospective employers balking at your pricing…are those the employers you want to work for? For me, it’s not. There will always be more contracts. I promise you.

Resources:

  1. The eLearning Guild has an incredibly helpful calculator: 2018 Salary Calculator, and you can use this as a starting point to base your annual value according to various elements (e.g., state in which you live, education, years of experience, etc.). Another thing the eLearning Guild does is an annual salary and compensation guide – aimed at recruiters, but also helpful to peruse if you’re looking into working for yourself.
  2. Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design by Donald Clark provides a great overview.
  3. The Chapman Alliance – How Long Does it Take to Create Learning is a resource I recommend OFTEN.

Top Blog Posts of 2018

First off, I cannot believe that it is mid-December already. I know everyone says this, but wowee! 2018 blew by!

I’m always asked for better categorization of my posts, and I really want to do that (honestly, I’ve wanted to overhaul my site for YEARS now), but I haven’t yet perfected cloning technology, found someone that I trust to overhaul the site for me, or discovered a way of increasing the amount of time in a day…I know. Excuses.

In lieu of overhauling the site, I’ve opted to curate a list of my most popular blog posts of 2018, and I’ll attempt to categorize them as much as possible. Enjoy!

Screencasts:

E-Learning/Instructional Design/Freelance Advice:

Portfolio:

Conferences:

Random:

E-Learning Advice: How to Get Started

There are a lot of questions I get about Instructional Design, E-Learning, Development – they’re all over the place, but the questions I get the most are:

  1. How do I get started (in Instructional Design or E-Learning)?
  2. How do I find work?

So I thought I would take some time to discuss each of these questions, starting with “How do I get started?”

There are a lot of ways of answering this question, and I’ve written about my origin story before. However, I’ll give you the short version of my story here:

I didn’t know Instructional Design was a profession, and I studied Psychology and Linguistics in school, hoping to become a Speech-Language Pathologist. A friend I knew worked as an Instructional Designer, referred me to apply at the company for which she worked, and I fell in love with the role. My start was an unconventional start.

Some folks fall into Instructional Design with backgrounds in Human Resources or Training Coordination, some Instructional Designers are former teachers, or have teaching backgrounds, and some take a more direct approach (and those methods certainly don’t encompass all means of becoming an Instructional Designer).

First Things First – Research

Are you even interested in Instructional Design or E-Learning? My first piece of advice is to do your research. There are a ton of places to do this research, but my top two would be:

  1. Talking to someone who is already working within the role, and asking them questions about their day-to-day.
  2. The Instructional Design subreddit – there are tons of helpful nuggets in there.

Other places you might want to look:

Education (Paid)

I would say that the most direct approach would to complete higher education degrees or diplomas within the field of Instructional Design, E-Learning, or Education. While I don’t believe this education is 100% necessary to become an Instructional Designer, it certainly helps. Some great programs are offered through OLC and ATD, and there are many options available at universities and colleges. I did eventually obtain my Masters of Education (Post-Secondary Studies), and it has helped me acquire Instructional Designer roles in higher education. However, for corporate/private sector, I don’t believe such credentials will make or break your chances.

There are also some great MOOCs available that let you get a feel for the principles behind Instructional Design/E-Learning Development:

Education (Free or Low-Cost)

Lynda has a great Become an Instructional Designer learning path, and there are so many great Instructional Design/Education books available:

2017 Recap and 2018 Goals

2017 Recap

I hope everyone is having a great New Year’s Eve! Our little family has spent the last week in quarantine with the flu, but I can’t say I’m complaining to much about having a New Years Eve in. Overall, I feel like I hit the business goals hard, but definitely slacked on the personal goals.

This year, I maintained consistent relationships with my long-term clients and added a few other clients, I networked per usual, attended ATD ICE and DevLearn, spoke at DevLearn, and facilitated a week of Articulate Storyline 360 training. My husband and I traveled to Calgary and Toronto, and I traveled to Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Newfoundland. I would have run the Bluenose and participated in the relay race; however, the dates fell in line with when I was away for ATD ICE.

Personal goals:

  • Slow down and take more time to enjoy the present;
  • Maintain a consistent exercise schedule;
  • Register for run the Bluenose Half Marathon and a relay race; and
  • Travel to Calgary and Toronto with my husband and plan an anniversary vacation.

Business goals:

  • Maintain relationships with my long-term clients, and continue building a small network of clients.
  • Continuing networking with colleagues I respect;
  • Attend 2-3 conferences;
  • Speak at 1-2 e-learning events;
  • Get Sprout up and running;
  • Learn a new skill;
  • Participate regularly in the Articulate E-Learning Heroes Challenges; and
  • Blog regularly.

2018 Goals

For 2018, I really want to focus on some of the personal goals, and more maintenance when it comes to business goals.

Personal goals:

  • Slow down and enjoy the present;
  • Maintain a consistent exercise schedule;
  • Be more mindful of the food I’m putting into my body and make positive dietary changes;
  • Run the Bluenose Half Marathon and participate in a relay race (should be do-able since I won’t be attending ATD ICE this year); and
  • Travel to Toronto with my husband for the Blue Jays Home Opener and plan and execute an epic 5-year anniversary vacation.

Business Goals:

  • Increase business income by 25%;
  • Attend 2 conferences;
  • Speak at 1-2 e-learning conferences;
  • Participate in the e-learning heroes community challenges (period – not regularly, just participate);
  • Blog regularly;
  • Break 1,000,000 views on the blog; and
  • Get more courses up on Sprout.

3 Tips for Tax Time

This is my third full year in business, and my second year filing taxes for my small business. I’ve learned a few things since last year, and I thought I’d share some of that with you! This year has been a breeze doing my taxes, and hopefully these simple tips can help you hate tax season just a little bit less.

1. Allot Administrative Time

This sounds incredibly boring, but I promise – you will save time in the long run. If you allot a certain number of hours per week or per month to completing administrative tasks, you will have a much smaller headache come tax time when you’re trying to track down invoices, calculate sales tax, itemize expenses, etc.

I try to give myself 3 hours per month to tackle anything and everything administrative. Most times I need fewer than 3 hours, so overshooting the allotment makes me feel better about myself when I finish in less time.

2. Maintain a Spreadsheet

Some folks I know use bookkeeping Xero Services software to track all of their expenses and income; I have gone back to the stone age a bit and maintain an excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has been pre-programmed with calculations to account for sales tax (a necessary evil here in Canada), and it pulls information from my various income and expense books into one main book that balances all of it out. It’s glorious!

My spreadsheet goes hand-in-hand with point #1; when I work through my administrative tasks, I populate this spreadsheet as I go. Doing this throughout the year saves a TON of time in the long run. Instead of spending days labouring over my tax forms, I simply pull data from my spreadsheet and toss it into the tax software.

3. Invest in Software

I know I just mentioned going back to the stone age with my spreadsheet, but hey! Excel is software, right? It might not be bookkeeping software, but it does the trick.

When it comes to investing in software, I am specifically talking about tax software. I use H&R Block’s tax software because 1) I don’t have time to manually calculate all of my taxes, 2) it’s free up to so many returns, 3) my refund comes expediently, and 4) they have built in information related to my provincial tax requirements and rebates. Last year I used their software and it was easy peasy!