Communications consulting best practices: Part 1 of 3

Go forth and freelance

I’ve been a full-time freelance communications consultant since the early fall of 2022. It happened by accident — I was caught early in the wave of layoffs that hit the tech sector throughout that year and and by pure happenstance, I started freelancing as a way to earn money while I was looking for a full-time, in-house communications job. Before I knew it, I was spending more time freelancing than I was job hunting, and much to my surprise, I was really liking it. What began as a side quest while I worked towards what I thought I wanted — a traditional job with a steady paycheck and 401k match — blossomed into an emotionally, intellectually, and financially rewarding career.

Among communicators, freelancing is becoming an increasingly viable option: Most PR firms’ retainers are too expensive for startups relative to the value they provide, and startups are more judicious about wantonly adding headcount in the first place. With demand comes supply, and more comms people are making the jump from full time, in-house jobs to freelancing, with delightful groups like Comms People, among other networks, cropping up to provide support and best practices.

I want to help those who are thinking about making the leap to consultancy and share all of my best advice and things I've learned. Over the next three essays, I’ll share 10 tips for comms consultants that will help your business grow.

Number one: Getting paid

When I first started out, the co-founder of my old PR firm Alex Hunter gave me some good advice: If you are trying to build a viable business, focus on making money.

Seems obvious, no?

The problem is, for many freelancers starting out, it’s easy to get caught up in how you’ll brand yourself, figuring out the types of clients you want to work with, hemming and hawing over the specific set of services you’ll provide, building the perfect website, and doing all of the other things except the main thing — finding work and earning money.

That’s not to say you should take on every single opportunity that comes your way. Whenever I’ve gotten a bad gut feeling about a prospective client and ignored the bad vibes because of the pay that comes with it, it’s almost never worked out.

When I first started out, B2B SaaS was my bread and butter — working on anything remotely approaching marketing was anathema for me. But I quickly learned that flexibility helps you make money, and I now do a lot of marketing-adjacent work, such as building up and organizing sales enablement libraries. I’ve essentially moved away from B2B SaaS (for now), and by affording myself the avenues to earn money in new ways with different types of organizations, I’ve developed skills I wouldn’t otherwise have learned — and I’ve built a thriving, diverse business in the process.

Number two: Payment mechanisms

One of the hottest debates among freelancers is whether to bill hourly or bill via retainer. I’m of the firm opinion that one is not better than the other, because each has its pros and cons that will impact how you work. For full transparency, I bill hourly, but worked exclusively via retainer for years at a PR firm, so I have experience with both.

Hourly rates

An hourly remit is as you’d expect — you get paid for the work you do.

The upshot is flexibility: If someone wants me to work on a media plan or sit in on an All Hands meeting, I get paid all the same (though as a trusted partner to my clients, I try to counsel against the latter as it’s not the best use of their money or my time). Startups’ needs change — if I’m hourly, the projects I execute can change along with their needs. It makes me easy to work with.

Pro tip: I know freelancers who charge different rates to different clients depending on the type of work — rote, administrative work at an hourly rate less than a high-level, creative and strategic remit, for example

The downside is income variability. Below is a snapshot of my income from December 2023 to September 2024 (dollar amounts removed). You can see a big dip in the winter, and again in the summer. It’s an annual trend for me, and other industries might have differing ebbs and flows, but there are ebbs and flows all the same.

The first time my income dropped 40% month over month I felt like someone dumped a bucket of cold water on me. I felt like I failed.

But the opposite is also true — look at that jump from January to February! I was on top of the world, and I knew nothing was going to slow me down (lo and behold, the summer lull did, in fact, slow me down). After a few years of swings in my income, I’ve learned to manage my emotions and my budget, but this is the reality and the downside of hourly billing.

Retainers

Billing on retainer works like this: For a certain amount of money, you will provide an agreed upon set of services (a “scope of work,” or SOW). Those services typically have volumetric numbers over a period of time (e.g., I will write three blogs a month). The upside is certainty: You, a freelancer, know what you will get paid and the client knows what outputs or services they will receive.

The downside is inflexibility. If a client wants a deliverable or support outside of the retainer, you have three choices: 1) Do the thing, and risk “scope creep,” meaning increasingly taking tasks outside of the remit for which you are paid; 2) say no outright; or 3) renegotiate the scope to accommodate the request (such as offering one blog for a one page product overview the client wants).

Option 1 is dangerous. It’s called scope creep for a reason, and it’s very easy to end up doing a ton of work you aren’t getting paid for. This is all too common; remain vigilant. Option 2, saying no, is both viable and necessary, but the reality is that the more you flat out say no, the more tense your relationship with the client will become, which can ultimately impact your revenue. Option 3 definitely works, but the time spent negotiating changes is also time spent not doing work.

Number three: The curse of one-off projects

One-off projects — essentially, short term engagements to execute a limited remit — are tough. I almost always say no to them because there is a high degree of opportunity cost and the financials are suboptimal.

Diving deeper:

• The reason why SaaS became a thing is because it produces recurring revenue. Rather than paying $200 once for a piece of software (which we used to do in the olden times, anyone remember paying for Microsoft Word?), you pay $15/month into perpetuity.

• Not unlike retainers for freelancers, recurring revenue provides predictable, stable income and, in general, increases the viability of a business.

• Projects are not recurring revenue. They are one-time, “you get X dollars for doing Y things and then we part ways” engagements.

• Every time you work with a client, you spend time getting up to speed — getting to know the team, learning the underlying business mechanics, market opportunity, and technology, integrating yourself into company workflows, so on and et cetera. The “cost” of onboarding diminishes the longer you retain a client, and it’s magnified if you only work with a startup for one or two months.

All in all, projects kind of suck, but if you’re new to consulting, I would consider them. Not only do they allow you to do the most important thing — earn money — but there are other benefits, too. You’ll build a professional network as a freelancer, and there is no better business development engine than a former client who loves you. And honestly, there is something heartening and validating about getting paid early in your career as a consultant. Success is no guarantee, and every consultant is, more or less, on their own. Taking on a project, executing it well, and seeing a paid invoice land in your bank account builds confidence.

As your business matures and you eventually land long-term engagements that generate recurring revenue, you can be more scrutinous when it comes to which projects you take on. Ideally, you’ll be doing fewer projects over time because an increasing proportion of overall revenue will be recurring.

Number four? Stay tuned…

Over the next two essays, I’ll explore how communications consultants can best onboard clients, how to build a suite of services, how to identify your ideal customer, and why you don’t need a glut of digital tools to be successful. Subscribe to follow along, and share with any fellow freelancers you know (or better yet, share this with anyone you know that might be thinking about freelancing!).

I’ll see you in your inbox soon.

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Shoutout to Emily Ann Hill for providing feedback and editing this essay. Check out Junetail Creative to see how Emily can help improve your writing and, for small businesses, develop an unforgettable brand experience.