Diary of a Business Owner is a collaborative blog series sharing the inside stories, thoughts, and experiences of other business owners. Owning a business is hard. There’s no manual or secret handbook to success. Diary of a Business Owner is here to help you gain an insight into life as a business owner and to remind you that you are not alone on this journey.
Helen is a freelance Events and Communications Manager with over 11 years of industry experience.
Business: Freelance Events and Communications Manager
Location: Preston, Lancashire
Business Owner Since: August 2020
Go-to Coffee Shop Order: I’m a sucker for a gimmick, I love a pink hot chocolate
Where you can find me: Over on my website or on Instagram at @helenvbrady
The day in a life of an Events and Communications Manager
I am a freelance Events and Communications Manager, working with a wide variety of clients on both virtual, hybrid and in-person projects. After 10 years with an event management agency and a period on furlough, in August 2020 I found myself newly self-employed. It’s been a nervous, but exciting time of trial and error, testing the waters and taking chances while I find out what works for me in the freelance world.
Typical daily morning routine
7:45am – 9am – I’ll be honest, I’m not up and out this early every day of the week, but one of the few good things that came from Lockdown was the introduction of the daily walk.
In my old job, I could quite easily get up, jump in the car, get to the office, sit at my desk the entire day, jump back in the car and head home again. I could barely scratch the surface of a couple of thousand steps. When the only thing we were allowed to do last year was go for a walk, I made sure I got out of the house as often as I could.
Now life has got a little bit more back to normal, and work is busy once again, I’ll admit that the daily walk has gone out of the window. My friend Nicola and I, another freelancer, do try and book in a weekly early morning schlep whenever time allows. We try and go mid-week, usually grab a brew on route, and talk about everything under the sun.
Nicola and I run a collaborative platform called Make Do Drink that usually hosts pop up creative workshops with local makers and independent venues. We switched to Zoom workshops throughout lockdown, but we are hoping to start making plans for in-person events from September onwards. We had a good old natter about new ideas and future plans. Sometimes the old creative juices work a bit better when you’re not stuck behind a laptop!
9:30am – 10 am – Catch up on emails! I can’t cope with a messy inbox. I’ve got to read it, deal with it, put it in a folder.
Client meetings, events and zooming around
10 am – 11 am – Client Meeting, Kick-Off/Intro to a Cvent, a virtual event platform
One of the clients I am working with has a large-scale virtual event coming up at the end of June and they have just signed a contract with the digital event platform Cvent. There are a whole host of virtual event platforms available, and the developments in them, even in the past 18 months. Although many of the platforms operate in a similar way, they do all tend to have slightly different back systems and can take some getting used to in order to fully understand the functionalities. This client has just switched event platforms, and I am helping them implement a digital rebrand. This kick-off meeting was with the Cvent team to get an introduction to the platform, and an initial explanation of what it can do.
11 am – 12 pm – Client Meeting, Introduction to the Team
I try and have a gap between video calls, so you have time to grab a brew but sometimes everything happens at once so today it’s back-to-back Zoom/Teams/Skype!
One of the most complicated parts of freelancing I’ve found so far is getting your timings right. As one project ends, ideally you want another one just starting up to take its place, and that’s what’s happening today. A contact I have worked with previously at another organisation has moved roles, and they very kindly got back in touch with me about supporting some events over Summer 2021. This meeting is so I can meet the rest of the team, so who I am going to be working with, introduce myself and get some more details.
I work with clients in a variety of ways, by the hour, by the day, or by set project fee’s, so I do try and find out as much as I can about a project before it starts however sometimes, even the client isn’t sure exactly what is they want until we get started.
Kick-off meetings are great to get the ball rolling, start asking the right questions and try and begin to plan out the key deadlines. When it comes to event planning, I find it useful to start from the event date itself and work backwards, highlighting key milestones and actions that need to be taken along the way. Contracting suppliers, sending invites, registering guests, communicating instructions, event promo, ordering swag, everything has a lead time and that needs to be factored into all delivery.
12:30 pm – 1:15 pm – Back on to Zoom once again! (Hopefully, the last big video call of the day, they’re way more exhausting than ‘in-real-life’ meetings, do you reckon?)
Although this time it’s for a short learning virtual event hosted by Fiona Grayson from CanDid, formerly know as She Can. She Did.
CanDid is a business network built for women who are tired of the ‘overnight success’ hype online, the blanket advice that often lacks substance and the misleading idea that we have to consistently ‘win’ to be a success. The events are normally for members only, but Fiona explained that this topic was such a popular one, she decided to make it available to everyone.
The session was “A How-to Guide…Getting on the Property Ladder When You’re Self Employed”. Having only been self-employed since August 2020, I’m fairly new to the game, and with buying my own house very much on the list of next big steps for me, I thought this session could be handy.
My preconceptions are very much that it’s impossible to get a mortgage on your own when you are self-employed, and although it’s definitely not as straightforward as if you have a permanent full-time job, it definitely can be done.
Screen-free time, gourmet toasties and afternoon organisation
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm – One of the ‘self-employed’ perks is being able to arrange your own diary and pencil in some catch-ups with friends and family a little bit more flexibly. After a morning in front of the screen, I decided I wanted to get out for some dinner and there is a great new food truck not too far away that I’ve been meaning to try out. It’s also near my parents’ house, so I dropped my Dad a quick call to see if he wanted to join me. 10 minutes later, we’re sat outside with gourmet toasties and loaded fries! Result! (He also suggested a swift one in the pub next door so I may have had half a Guinness as well. Another Result!)
3 pm – 6 pm – Back to work for a few hours to catch up on all the bits and bobs that I should have been doing while I was in meetings this morning. I currently have about 6 different projects ongoing, both a mixture of Events and Comms work, each with different time commitments, deadlines and actions that take up my week. Normal ‘work’ can involve anything from email admin to delegate communication, to building registration and events sites, to research and sourcing, to venue finding, and everything else in between. I have a wall planner with all my key deadlines and meetings on so I keep track of what’s happening with each project, and if I ever get behind on something or an urgent/unexpected deadline comes up, I know that I can work late/weekends to make sure it gets done. Freelancing means I can get that time back later down the line when things aren’t so busy!
Flipping tyres and winding down for the evening
7:30 pm – 8:20 pm – I hate the idea of exercise, but I have been going to this Bootcamp class twice a week since before Christmas. The actual physical exercise is horrendous, but I cannot argue with the fact that it makes me feel better when I’ve finished, and I sleep like a light when I get home. I’ve not missed many classes at all but when I do, I can really tell the difference. (And not just because I’m less tired! It’s more in my head, I can let some secret anger out smashing gym balls and flipping tyres. Exercise works. Who knew? 😊)
9 pm – It’s probably a bit late for food really but if I eat before I go to Bootcamp, I will definitely throw up! Ha-ha! So, it’s tea and some TV catch up for me. I’m currently working my way through This is Us and would highly recommend it.
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