Leapers Sign Up Information

Leapers. November 2020.

Fiiiive golden invoices.

Hello from Matthew.

I think we're all feeling the impact of the year, there isn't a WhatsApp group or zoom call or teams chat I'm included in where someone isn't talking about how exhausted they are - and rightfully so. The end of the year, when the evenings draw in, feels long enough regardless of if you're dealing with a whole load of other troubles too.

But the end of the year also afford us the opportunity to look back and reflect on the positives and celebrate the moments we've grown, we've collaborated, we've been proud, and we've . well frankly just managed to survive.

So, on December 1st, we'll be launching our Leapers Advent calendar. Each day, a new door opens with a little technique to help you look back over the year and capture the highlights of 2020.

There's no chocolate behind any of the doors (sorry), but hopefully some of the doors will still put a smile on your face.

Have a look at https://leapers.co/advent

Work well.
Matthew

Awkward Self-Promotion Time
Support Leapers in the YunoJuno 2020 Freelancer Awards

Thanks to Sarah and Ann for posting this in the slack - I'm not very comfortable at self-promotion, but the work which Leapers does has been nominated for an award, and I'm hoping that the publicity around this might help us to reach and support more people - plus an opportunity to celebrate many other amazing freelancers and their kindness this year.

All it takes is a click. 

If you have 10 seconds and find our work helpful, please do vote.

Technique: What value did your work create?

Lots of us have been taking work which doesn't always align to what we might want to be doing this year - but every project has value, even if it's learning a lesson in listening to red flags. 

At the end of each project, try and identify what types of value the project may have delivered for you. Did it pay well (Commercial value)? Did you learn from it (Development value)? Did you create a new connection or client relationship? Did you have to develop a new skill? Did it give you space to breathe? 

There's a longer article on this technique here.

Do you need to hear this?

"Needing help isn't a failure. Not asking for help is a weakness."

Working Well during Lockdown 2.0

Six months of long, ongoing, persistent stress, even if it''s low level, even if you're fit and well, is not healthy for anyone.

So, we''ve completely revised our popular guide to Working Well during the pandemic with new sections to reflect the ongoing state of affairs and updated sections specifically for freelancers.

Now is time to reflect again on how you are you working well from home, and make sure you're keeping things in place to continue to look after your wellbeing.

Have a look at the revised guide here.

Brainfood

A collection of things our community have found, which inspire, educate and support.

Read: The magic of pottering 

Provoke: Knowing when to quit

Learn: How to build resilience

Count: Debunking myths around hiring an accountant

Rest: Take a break

And finally...

Leapers has helped over 50,000 people in the past three years without funding. Imagine what we could do with a little more support. 

We welcome contributions towards our project, so we can continue to support the mental health of the self-employed. Please consider buying us a coffee.

Leapers. September 2020.

Covinter is coming.

Hello from Matthew.

You'll notice that this month's newsletter is late. I normally try and write a review of the previous month on the first weekend of the new month, but I'm not really sure where October has gone. It's mostly because I've been completely overwhelmed in recent weeks. Professionally and emotionally, and naturally this turns into physical and mental exhaustion. 

It's in part down to the ongoing situation with COVID. Whilst I'm fortunately very healthy, my family are well, my children are back at school, I have work, and by most definitions, I'm doing absolutely fine. I have few reasons to complain or feel stressed or worried or anxious, so a big part of me keeps thinking "Matthew, so many people are doing so much worse than you. You shouldn't feel bad. Just deal with it".

Yet, this is not helpful thinking. Just because you might be in a more fortunate position than someone else never means that your own emotions and feelings are less important or less worth paying attention to. You can recognise privilege and practise gratitude whilst also being mindful of your own needs and wellbeing - and we have all been enduring an ongoing heightened state of pressure over the past 200 days of varying states of lockdown, which has, without question and empirically proven, taken its toll on all of us.

As we look towards winter, it is so important to take time to reflect upon what we've experienced in the past months, what lessons we can learn, what new habits we've established and neglected (both good and bad), and again be gentle with ourselves on how we are coping right now, and if there are things we can put in place for the coming winter months. Not unlike the fat squirrels I see in the park at the moment, storing nuts for hibernation - putting some effort in building your support network and health habits is a good activity to be spending a portion of your time right now. There's probably a metaphor about that squirrel, the acorns you gather today, and growth into large oak trees over time or something, but I'll leave that to the more creative of our community.

Work well.
Matthew

Event: Write a letter to your future self
Join Post Quarantine and Leapers on October 30

We're big fans of the power of letter writing as a technique to reflect and plan - and the concept of writing a letter to your future self is something we've featured in the newsletter before - but this week, we're running a letter-writing session with our friends at Post Quarantine. It's a project established by Nikky Lyle, Claire Medcalf and Emma Williams, and a wonderful way to spend a little time together apart. 

It's just one hour on zoom during October 30th at 2pm, come and write with us - more details on the eventbrite link below.

Nominate Kindness

Whilst we are still not allowed to hug each other - the folk over at YunoJuno are running their annual Freelancer Awards with a loving twist this year.

Normally their categories focus on things like "Designer of the Year" and "Strategist of the Year", but considering the backdrop of 2020, YJ want to celebrate freelancers who have done something to help their fellow human/s in the time of COVID. 

It's a wonderful idea, and one which we'd love to support - and ask all of our members to nominate someone they feel has done something wonderful to support others this year. You can nominate an individual or an organisation. 

Take five minutes to suggest and raise awareness of the good work you've seen from your fellow freelancer this year or if you feel Leapers has helped you this year - we'd be honoured to be considered as your nomination too!

Do you need to hear this?

"Your worth is not measured by your productivity"

Frequently Asked Question: Dealing with pricing disputes

Our community is full of helpful conversations around common challenges - and we try and capture the most valuable threads and capture them so others can benefit too. 

This month's FAQ comes from #askanything - Community member Amy S. asks about a situation where her client thought she was working for free - and asked "How can I avoid this happening again?"

Read the community responses.

No More Watercooler

Are you following our podcast series on mental health and self-employment? 

We spoke to Sabrina Bramble - a freelancer of over ten years, about her experiences of her own personal mental health, and the approach she takes to balance work and play. We discuss wearing tiaras, doing horrible things every morning, and the wibbly wobblies.

Listen to the podcast on your favourite app - just search for "No More Watercooler" or check out all the episodes on our site.

Brainfood

A collection of things our community have found that inspire, educate and support.

Listen - Can money make you happy? 

Read -  Being prepared is overrated: start before you feel ready

Learn  - How to feel more confident about money

News - the pretend creative agency that might become real

Tools - remote working tools

And finally...

Leapers has helped over 50,000 people in the past three years without funding. Imagine what we could do with a little more support. 

We welcome contributions towards our project, so we can continue to support the mental health of the self-employed. Please consider buying us a coffee.

Leapers. August 2020.

I am 3.

Hello from Matthew.

Three years ago this week, I created an account on Slack, and posted the link to a handful of people on LinkedIn, suggesting anyone who was interested in changing how they worked should get in touch, so we could swap advice, stories, questions and experiences. The conversations were broad: flexible working, parents returning to work, annoying clients, thinking about going freelance - but over time, it was clear that (or perhaps I subconsciously was drawn towards) conversations often turned to the emotional experience of work. 

Questions about "what software to use?" or "what type of tax should I be paying?" rarely had much of a response - but when someone talked about how they were struggling with a decision, or if someone said they were feeling disconnected whilst working from home, the small group of people would always rally around, and make sure the individual felt... well, supported. 

Three years on and that small group has grown from a handful of people, into a global community with a singular focus, supporting the mental health of the self-employed. I decided to codify that focus because at the time, I couldn''t find any group that was really concentrating solely on the emotional challenges of working differently, nor any guides or resources or support structures which specifically tackled the emotional challenges of being self-employed, and conversations in the media were rare, or at best light recommendations such as  "Feeling isolated? Join a coworking space!".

As we straddle a seemingly fraying rope-bridge spanning the pandemic-lockdown and a global-recession, in a society which feels ever more divided than connected where trolls and bots try and out-shout each other: today on our third birthday, I''m grateful for being part of a community which points in the other direction - a community which has been nothing but supportive, helpful, insightful, amusing, moving, heartfelt, open and inclusive; a community which without, I don''t think I''d be able to do the work I do; a community which I hold as a critical part of my support network as a freelancer.

Three years on - there''s still a very long way to go. There''s still very little in terms of tangible support for our mental health, and right now we need that support more than ever, but I just wanted to say thank you, to everyone who has been a member of Leapers over the past few years, thank you for helping me keep on top of my own mental health - and hopefully, you''ve felt some of the positive benefits of our community too.

Matthew

How are you in 2020? 
Take part in our annual Leapers study into self-employment and mental health.

Each year, we run a study into mental health and self-employment. This critical work helps us understand what challenges influence our wellbeing, and not only allows us to better support the community, but also goes towards encouraging your clients, your industry and government listen to the importance of the topic.  

It takes no longer than ten minutes, so put on the kettle, and tell us "how are you doing?"

Technique: Little Worries?

You already know and love #littlewins, right? 

It''s my favourite channel on Leapers. But there''s also benefit in sharing some of your little worries. I''m a big fan of journaling generally, but whilst writing down any frustrations in a notepad can be useful to get thoughts out of your head and reflect upon them later - it''s even more powerful to share any worries with your support tribe, not least are you talking about the concern [which is proven to reduce stress and anxiety], but you might also be connected to someone who has had a similar problem, and receive some wisdom in return. 

Use #lounge to share any of your concerns, or #askanything if you have a particular challenge you want to try and tackle.

Do you need to hear this?

"You get more sh*t done than you give yourself credit for."

The Weekly Question: Professional passion or keep jobs and hobbies apart?

Each week, we ask The Weekly Question, designed to prompt and provoke conversation around key themes within self-employment and wellbeing. 

We had a lively debate on August 7: Would you like your passion to become your profession and get paid to do what you love, or do you think there''s value in keeping passions as a separate additional thing in your life? 

We're starting to capture threads for The Weekly Question and curate them into articles, so you can see some of the discussion here. 

Brainfood

A collection of things our community have found that inspire, educate and support.

+ Opinion: Why working from home has equality challenges

+ Read: Why self-promotion isn''t a dirty word

+ Technique: Breathwork 

+ Technique: Don''t over-prepare

And finally...

Leapers is a project that has grown from a few folk chatting about flexible working and freelancing, into a global community with over 3500 members and over 35,000 visitors looking for help this year alone. We don't receive any funding and offer our support for free to anyone who needs it. 

If Leapers has been valuable to you or you want to support us helping others, please do consider buying us a coffee.

Leapers. July 2020.

It''s getting hot in here.

Hello from Matthew.

It's officially Summer! School is out (is that better or worse, I'm not sure?), the UK is braced for heatwaves, and lockdown is relaxing, and then not, and then is, and then not. OK - so perhaps things aren't really that different, we're still facing heightened levels of uncertainty, and the strange state of limbo we're in, where some are returning to 'normal' and others are still not sure the right thing to do, isn't helping us relax and wind down a great deal.

But summer holidays have never been that relaxing for the self-employed anyway.

Can you take a holiday? Should I take my laptop with me? What if a piece of work arrives? Or are all my clients away for the break too? Independent workers take off just 14 days a year in contrast to the national average allowance of 28 days - 13% take no time off at all.

Rest is critical - it's a part of being able to do your job well, just like a craft skill, or having the right piece of software, without rest, you can't work, so it's counterproductive to the quality of your work to not take a break. Even if that holiday is a long weekend here and there, or finishing early for the day, finding ways to give yourself time off is an important part of working well.

We're running a mini-poll, let us know: Are you taking a break this summer?

No matter what your vacation schedule looks like, we hope you have a great summer, from everyone at Leapers.

Matthew

Technique: Add an extra day.

If you are taking some time off, can we persuade you to take an extra day holiday?

Probably not, but hear me out. 

Adding a day at home before you start work again gives you some time to get back into the right headspace, and deal with all of those emails and create a plan, before you're having to deal directly with working again. 

It's not really a day off - but that all-important time to catch up on admin, paperwork, and business tasks that aren't directly client related. 

Putting a day in the diary where you're committed to getting it done also means you may be less tempted to 'just get some admin' done during your break, and you can rest well, having given yourself some extra time to focus on the perhaps boring but important things.

Hello, I''m Florence

Introducing Florence - she's the newest member of the Leapers team, and her job is to help you get feedback on projects you've recently completed. 

Feedback is invaluable, but so often, we forget to ask for it, and having to chase up after can seem like a task that isn't especially important. Following up some months after the project to find out what impact your project had is also hugely useful, but whoever remembers to do that? Well, that's why Florence is here. Just send her an email with some details on your project, and she'll contact your team, and follow up. 

Visit https://florence.leapers.co to find out more, or just email florence@leapers.co to get started.

The Weekly Question: Back to the office?

Each week, we ask The Weekly Question, designed to prompt and provoke conversation around key themes within self-employment and wellbeing. 

Back on July 17, we asked "Are we as a community more likely to push back on heading on-site if clients ask? Or our members excited to get some proper face time with their team now?". 

You resoundingly replied "but why would we need to go in?", although lots of variations on a theme, mostly saying "it depends". 

We're starting to capture threads for The Weekly Question and curate them into articles, so you can see some of the discussion here. 

Brainfood

A collection of things our community have found that inspire, educate and support.

+ Watch - a great video from the CEO of Patreon on why annual plans can help.

+ Read - what are Google doing to ensure the health of their remote employees?

+ Chat - an interview between one of our members Gabriella B and Dame Stephanie Shirley, a truly amazing person by any standard

+ Support - legal support for writers on substack

+ Think - Can bots become our friends?

Do you need to hear this?

"That does sound like an interesting opportunity, but why not just let this one go and have a rest?"

And finally...

Leapers is a project that has grown from a few folk chatting about flexible working and freelancing, into a global community with over 3500 members and over 35,000 visitors looking for help this year alone. We don't receive any funding and offer our support for free to anyone who needs it. 

If Leapers has been valuable to you or you want to support us helping others, please do consider buying us a coffee.

Leapers. 2020 in review.

Happy new year.

Hello from Matthew.

It can often feel like the moment January 1st rolls around, everything resets, we forget the previous year, and clean sheets are laid for what is to come. Personally, I don't know if that's a good thing. 

Whilst it's wonderful to mark the arrival of a new year - learning from what has happened before, small steady steps towards your goals, refocusing on purpose, and consistency in the face of uncertainty - these are the things that feel like a more effective approach to building up resilience and sustainable ways of working. 

All to often, in January, we set grand ambitions, objectives, and resolutions which are too large and set ourselves up for failure, and come February, if we're already looking at a list of things we didn't manage to achieve, that doesn't set us up for the best year.

Likewise, looking forward is positive, but remembering the lessons of the last 12 months is invaluable too. New research from a cross-European group of academics shows that the self-employed who are better able to tackle unforeseen problems and learn new things have better mental health than those who don't. Embracing the bad things, recognising your shortcomings and then working on them, is good for your health.

Not unlike the Roman god Janus, who is often linked to the first month of January, looking both backward and forwards, to reflect upon what has happened, and to look ahead to make plans for how to move ahead is something we should be doing constantly, not just on December 31, not just on January 1st, but more frequently. Daily, weekly, monthly - making reflection, learning, and planning a regular ritual, rather than an annual exercise.

One of the things which I find Leapers helps me to do is establish some of those rituals - it's why we aim to have a pattern to our shared activities - like #theweeklyquestion each Tuesday, and a reflection each Friday. It''s why I say good morning each day to the group, and write a monthly email. These rituals create space and time to focus on the most important asset in your business - you. 

And if there's one thing that 2020 has taught us all, it''s that looking after ourselves is a critical part of anyone's plan.

Work well.
Matthew

2020 - a year in review.
What happened this year?

January - we started the year with excitement about our plans for 2020, with a content plan spanning money, ways of working, support networks and learning, and starting to nudge businesses who hired freelancers to work well with us. It was also the month when we welcomed Harry and Meghan to the world of self-employment. 

February - we published our second little guide - on the topic of Imposter Syndrome, a common concern for freelancers, which affects not only finding work but also our income and dealing with disputes. We also published our suggestions for tackling anxiety around IR35, which was due to arrive in April.

March - This little thing called COVID-19 was appearing in the news, so we published our guide to things to consider should matters get worse, like proactively working with clients to prepare for working remotely, changing contract terms, and setting up buddy networks in case you fall ill, and suggestions for how to work well from home. Little did we know what was going to happen, but about 20,000 people arrived on our doorstep looking for support.

April - we moved into Calm Mode, as the rest of the internet was telling everyone what and how they should be dealing with the pandemic, we suggested less should and more do what you can. I appeared on the TV talking about the impact of the pandemic on the self-employed, our work appeared in major news outlets and our working from home guides were shared widely, as we continued to create guides tackling the new challenges we were predicting.

May - the year was starting to get tiring, I know I was exhausted after months of feeling what everyone in the community was feeling - but there didn't seem to be much of an end in sight. Work felt like it was reappearing for some, but it was hard - motivation and focus was lacking, so we focused on how to deal with lethargy and overwhelm, plus the new ways of working we'd all discovered.

June/July/August - after months of homeschooling, now six weeks of summer holidays too. I was loving spending more time with family, but juggling work, parenting, the community - it was a great deal, and I hadn't taken a break since February. It was taking its toll. The rest of the world felt like it was returning a little bit to normal, and conversation turned to 'return to work', or rather 'offices'.

September - a second lockdown loomed, but it felt different this time - we were all tired and exhausted, so we turned to look at managing energy, and tried to highlight that redesigning the way we work is entirely possible to fit around our needs, not just the expectations of when we are available. I'd found myself an almost full-time contract, and balancing community work and paid work was proving even more challenging.

October - seven months of varying states of lockdown, and with a winter ahead of us, we shared content on planning for the shorter days, and tried to nudge people back into addressing lapsed positive habits. We were also attending lots of virtual events speaking with various communities and groups on the habits which can help to improve how you work remotely. Personally - I fell in to a pretty dark place, and was really not coping with the long year and demands I put upon myself. We also piloted a new platform for agencies to offer support to their freelancers called 'Work Well With', and celebrated our third birthday as a project.

November - the end of the year was rapidly approaching despite most of us feeling like our energy levels were already depleted. We published our revised Winter Edition of working well during COVID, and looked at ways to celebrate Leaperversaries - or the day you went self-employed. 

December - the Leapers advent calendar returned, with a daily exercise and technique for each day of the month, and we shared suggestions on how to take a break over the holidays, something many find hard to do. We also campaigned for businesses to pay their freelancers ahead of the break, so invoices were not overdue for Christmas. And to wrap the year up, I was honoured to be recognised in the YunoJuno Freelancer Awards for work we did this year at Leapers.

It wasn't the plan I'd started out with, we didn't achieve what I was aiming to do, but after 12 months of an unexpected year, we've supported over 35,000 people in 2020, welcomed hundreds of new members to our family, published guides which have been read by thousands of people globally, and at the very least I know that we've continued to provide a space where people feel they can share openly and be supported.

Plans for 2021

Last year, I wrote a set of objectives for 2020. 

I haven't done it this year - I've started it a few times, but honestly, haven't had the energy or focus. I'm exhausted. I was hoping the two weeks not working would give me some time and energy to regroup and think about what we could do with Leapers - but it hasn't. The schools in London are closed, so we'll be going back into homeschooling, I'm fortunate that I have a contract currently - but it's very intense and consuming, so balancing what it necessary to pay the bills versus run the community, sometimes money takes precedent.

So I'm planning on keeping it simple:

1. Foundational content - I'm going back to basics and starting to write small pieces of content on each of the foundational topics and themes which support our mental health when self-employed. Once it's written, it's generally true forever, so doesn't need creating again and again, and is beneficial for all.

2. Signposting with partners - I want to focus on building awareness of our content, so more people can discover and get support where they need it - over 60% of people who want help don't know where to look, so working with partners to help signpost is a priority for me, but getting the word out there, so anyone who is self-employed knows where they can find help.

3. Building networks - the single biggest way to help people is to connect people, and whilst it is amazing that we have 5000+ registered members, it's always the smaller groups of people who help each other out that are the most effective, so I'm looking at how we do this better, formally and informally.

4. Accepting help - I've run Leapers the last three years on my own - and whilst the community are amazing at supporting each other, I'm not great at accepting support myself, so I want to look at ways at which active members of the community can take more of a role in pushing the work we do forwards, and it doesn't all fall to me.

5. Making it sustainable - Leapers is a loss-making activity. It costs a significant amount of money and time to run and maintain.  My ambition would be to do this full-time as my job, but that feels like a 3-year journey to make that a reality. So initially, I want to try and find a small handful of ways of generating a little revenue this year, to at least cover our costs. 

The other two aspects of sustainability are protecting time and maintaining quality - and it's the four other points that add up to enable this. Whilst it's the last point - it's also the most critical, as keeping the project active and helpful is the single most important goal.

And finally...

Leapers has helped over 50,000 people in the past three years without funding. Imagine what we could do with a little more support. 

We welcome contributions towards our project, so we can continue to support the mental health of the self-employed. Please consider buying us a coffee.