Hearing Jenny Stallard speak about how she discusses the pros and cons of going self-employed, is very interesting. Jenny is warm and enthusiastic and explains how she gently helps them to unveil their concerns about the various aspects of being self-employed or how they plan to ‘make the leap’ to being self-employed.
Jenny is very careful never to influence their decision; but through her client-led coaching she helps them to reach the right decision for them. In conversation, it is hard for Jenny to conceal the joy that freelance work has brought her over the years. She gets tremendous pleasure from empowering her clients to come to a decision if – after much discussion – it looks like it will be the correct one for them and their circumstances.
Jenny Stallard grew up in Reigate, Surrey, and she well remembers being given an electric typewriter as a young teenager and how it sowed the seeds for her love of writing. At that stage she thought that it would be fun to become either a journalist or fiction writer.
In those days, career guidance was minimal, and the main advice given was to pursue the subjects that you were good at. Jenny loved languages and was good at French, so it was a natural progression for her to go to university (1995) to study for a degree in French. Looking back, she wishes she could have linked her language course with media studies. Not long after her graduation, a pamphlet dropped through the letterbox at her home in Reigate one morning. It was advertising a City & Guilds course in journalism. She found herself filled with enthusiasm as the course sounded ideal for her. She enjoyed the course so much that shortly afterwards she signed up for the full NCTJ course (National Council for the Training of Journalists).
Her first job was on the Surrey Advertiser newspaper which she thoroughly enjoyed, but working for a magazine was her true ambition. She secured a job on That’s Life – a gritty weekly magazine and soon found herself making challenging interviews with everyone from victims of domestic violence and people who were seriously ill to women who had given birth against the odds and family pet stories, too.
It was certainly a steep learning curve for her, but she loved the challenge of meeting so many different people. A couple of years later she secured work with Woman magazine – one of the UK’s top-selling magazines – and again, enjoyed the challenges of working on a weekly magazine.
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The joys of freelancing
In 2006, Jenny decided to go freelance as there was plenty of freelance work available on magazines and it was very varied – the daily rate of pay was good too. Jenny loved having variety in her work as she was able to take a shift for a few weeks with one publication and then take other shifts of different lengths with other magazines to cover for annual leave or holiday –
‘I really enjoyed shift work as I got to know all the teams of the different magazines really well but never got sucked into office politics!’.
When she was 29, she decided to buy her own flat and is proud of the fact that she applied for a mortgage and could provide 24 months of pay slips with just a one-week period when she wasn’t working – impressive indeed.
Deep down, there was still the wish to work on a monthly magazine, and with that in mind, Jenny took a job at Practical Parenting & Pregnancy, which she laughs and describes as-
‘Really challenging as I am not a parent and knew nothing about childbirth or feeding problems etc’.
She stayed with the magazine for more than two years, but came to feel that writing and journalism might not be the right career for her anymore. She decided it was time to take a break from writing and enjoy doing something different, while she thought about what path she would like her career to take.
Time away from writing
In 2011 she set off to South America to travel for three months, going to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina.
When she came back, she completed a TEFL course, wondering if teaching could be the next step for her-
‘If I had ever wondered if I should have been like my Uni friends and followed a career in teaching, I soon found out how wrong that would have been! I loved teaching, and helping people learn, but I realised I didn’t want to be a secondary school teacher!’
She certainly couldn’t say that about skiing though and the next few months found herself working in the French Alps for the end of the winter season.
Jenny was surprised to find that the freelancing landscape had changed dramatically in a few years and that work was now far harder to secure. She still wanted to work on a monthly magazine but was happy to freelance as it gave her the opportunity to build up her portfolio.
Back in London in 2013, she would read the Metro newspaper and long to write for it. To her delight, she secured a job with Metro as Commissioning Editor on the Features desk- Metro is the popular daily newspaper that is distributed free throughout London, and she loved the job. It was varied and fun, with the chance to write about a wide range of lifestyle topics.
Redundancy poses a challenge
Jenny was made redundant in 2014 and it came as a bit of a shock to her. Looking back though, she feels it was the best thing that could have happened to her. At the time though, she felt apprehensive, and decided the best option was to go back to freelance work. She felt that things were changing, and that the digital world was gathering momentum so fast that she needed to embrace the new technology as this would make her more employable.
Jenny went back to freelancing, often working from home and pitching ideas to editors, as well as working in-house for different publications and agencies, including PA (Press Association), Future, and Archant.
A change in direction
It was at about the same time that she found herself also becoming increasingly interested in coaching. She had interviewed a number of coaches over the years and loved the way they talked and how empowering their words could be. She found herself thinking more and more about how coaching could be the way forward for her. During her years as a freelancer, she had faced many challenges and met many people who would like to be a freelancer but were apprehensive of making the jump to become self-employed. Jenny well remembers having these concerns herself. She thought there could be many people who would find support beneficial in helping them to explore potential opportunities and to then make a well-informed decision if it would be a good job move for them to make.
She was also finding it hard to be a freelancer, from the isolation to problems such as setting rates and securing work. She wanted to see if other people felt the same, and decided to ‘test the water’ with an Instagram account, which she called ‘Freelance Feels’. She was delighted by the positive response she received. The next step was to set up her own company that could become a meeting place for everyone who was considering freelance work and becoming self-employed. Freelance Feels launched in in June 2019 and soon a growing number of people were getting in contact with her to say they felt the same way about freelancing, too.
Jenny felt there was a real need for the type of support she was offering – especially as the number of self-employed people was beginning to rise.
Drawn by the idea of being an accredited coach herself, in October 2020, Jenny signed up for an intensive course with Ruth Kudzi MCC MA. Ruth is a highly qualified coach who is the CEO of Optimus Coach Academy. In early 2022, she became an ICF accredited coach and since then has been developing the role of Freelance Feels as-,
‘offering coaching and community for the self-employed’
Giving valuable support to freelancers
Jenny loves her work and has found that today more and more people are now deciding to work for themselves and that she is increasingly in demand. Many of her clients find her via Instagram, but she is currently developing her presence on LinkedIn too and her website draws a lot of interest from potential clients with its blog and newsletter.
She thoroughly enjoys all the conversations on Instagram and from them she gets clients who are keen to join group sessions or have a series of six one-to-one sessions.
Jenny finds her work incredibly rewarding as she is a real ‘people person’ who enjoys watching a person’s self-confidence blossom from one week to the next –
‘it is often the smallest moments that bring the most joy’ she explains ‘I love receiving a message saying that they have felt confident enough to apply for a particular freelance job or a few months after they have taken the plunge to say terrifying though it was, it was the best possible decision for them…’
This brings me so much pleasure because I know the joys of being freelance and the flexibility it offers. Freelancers have the reputation of not working as hard, but they do – at times to suit them! It feels so good to be able to ‘call the shots’ and decide how to fill and juggle your days. I often work in the evenings, but ease into Monday mornings – my labrador and whippet know they get a walk before work begins!’
Jenny Stallard – Founder of Freelance Feels
ACC accredited coach
Newsletter: Freelancefeels.substack.com
