The rise in freelancing isn’t just a COVID-19 trend. According to Gartner, by 2025, freelancers will make up 35% to 40% of the global workforce.
But despite its popularity, freelancing can be tough, especially in the creative field. Often, you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of, ask for help when you’re feeling overwhelmed, or lean on when work is slow.
Other obvious alternatives to a more solitary career — such as committing to a business partner or building a team — can be restrictive. We freelancers often choose solo jobs for the sake of independence and freedom. Why do we take responsibility for or answer to anyone else?
Fortunately, there is a structure that combines the best of partnership without the responsibility and commitment of a more formal arrangement. We call it “partnering with a partner,” and we have done it successfully for the past several years.
What is the Partnership Program?
When two people collaborate, they agree to combine their efforts on many fronts, save costs on certain services and administrative tasks, and increase each other’s skills and abilities. Think of it like living with someone before marriage or combining two households while keeping separate bank accounts.
We believe that partnering is a model that works particularly well for women, as being a solo entrepreneur can be a particularly attractive proposition.
Often, U.S. business culture promotes growth and value by extracting it from less expensive labor. In contrast, a partnership is a trust-based, lifestyle-oriented collaborative model for those who are more concerned with maintaining their independence and lifestyle while still getting the benefits of working with others.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a partnership working dynamic for you:
Find someone similar to you
Rather than looking for a partner with complementary skills (e.g., pairing strategists with designers, or marketers with product developers), it’s often best to partner when each partner is similar. It’s about finding someone you trust to deliver similar outputs, of the same quality, as you do yourself.
We met as freelancers working on a project for the same agency. After partnering on a few projects, we wanted to do it again.
Co-working may mean sharing revenue. However, the trade-off here is that you can share the burden with someone you trust and exchange ideas with. If one of us suddenly becomes busy, gets sick, or wants to take a break, there is no other choice. actual On vacation, we support each other.
We don’t share every project. But, most of the time, we do. Wants Working together because the benefits outweigh the costs.
Maintain your relationships
We source projects by leveraging our personal networks and by selling and delivering work under each of our brands. The client leads whoever wins the work and manages the project as they see fit. It’s entirely up to her how she uses the other person’s time; she also decides whether the partner will face the client. We track and calculate the hours worked at the end, with fees prorated based on actual time worked.
We have found over many projects that we usually maintain an 80/20 ratio between leader and support. We also instilled the principle of justice in our preparation. For example, we do not charge each other a referral fee in the initial transaction. We believe things will even out in the end and are committed to the health of the partnership.
Finding economies of scale
Once we started working together more regularly, we found many ways to save time and create efficiencies. We began by doubling down on our business development efforts and collaborating on a capabilities presentation that we could customize to our individual offerings. This worked so well that we decided to share the cost of a designer to help us create a standard presentation template that we could easily customize by swapping out our logos. We did the same thing using an online whiteboard tool.
We now have a robust library of slide and workshop templates that we can customize and use as needed. This way, when we need to step in to support each other, we already have a shared way of working, so there’s no time spent coaching or explaining our methodology. We now co-develop and share templates for everything: client presentations, frameworks, case studies, scopes of work, estimates, and more.
Divide up the grunt work
Although we share similar skill sets, operations-wise, we have slightly different strengths. We easily compartmentalize non-billable “grunt work.” Miriam gravitates toward creating processes and templates while Sarah enjoys developing marketing strategies.
By dividing the hard work based on each partner’s strengths and interests, you can ensure that your partnership pays off for everyone.
Hold each other accountable
When you’re independent, no one is checking in on whether you’ve missed a deadline. Instead of updating each other on our individual goals, we share our marketing goals and objectives. We have a standing meeting every two weeks to update each other on our progress. This keeps us focused on future work and gives each other visibility if we’re planning to do a project that requires the other person’s help.
We also plan longer in-person meetings every three months, where we can take our time to work through our long-term project list, assess how things are going, and think about the bigger picture—usually over a walk or a relaxing dinner.
By holding each other accountable, freelancers can ensure that you and your partner stay on track.
slow down
As with any relationship, we had to build a foundation of trust, generosity, and honesty first. From the beginning, we immediately shared our concerns and reactions with each other. We intentionally took things slowly, working together on project after project for about two years before we decided to combine our strengths. To date, we have chosen to retain the names of our LLCs and individual agencies. We’ve considered merging into one agency – and perhaps one day still will – but for now, working as a partner is the best of both worlds.
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