Angel Hellyer

Earlier this week, I got a notification from LinkedIn about a one-year milestone, and I was confused. I’d only started my business a month ago! I was sure I’d updated my profile that I was no longer with my previous employer. But I eventually realised why: it was one year ago that I started freelance work on the side of my paid employment.

What a difference a year has made!

I started doing freelance gigs when I was engaging with a small community organisation in a personal capacity and noticed that they really needed help with their branding and templates. As in, they didn’t have a logo or standardised colour scheme, and one document had no less than five different typefaces throughout. Oh, and don’t get me started on the accessibility issues!

First, I offered to create a visual brand guide for them, including a simple logo, fonts, colours and basic graphics they could use in various ways throughout their documentation and imagery. From this, I created Word and PowerPoint templates for them. I did this work for free, because I was employed at the time and I just wanted to help out, given the organisation was literally just one person trying to make a positive difference in the world.

Thankfully, that person loved my work and asked if they could pay me to edit their training materials and transfer them to the new templates. I had some spare time, so I agreed, thinking it would just be a one-off thing that I could do to both help the organisation and get a bit of extra cash.

But I realised I loved the style of work: helping an organisation through pain points and seeing how much of an improvement I could make, even when I wasn’t an employee. So I took on a couple of other freelance gigs in the following months: one to help a non-profit with its event booking system and another to edit and design a tabletop roleplaying game supplement book.

The variety of work and topics keeps me learning, which I love. And I can fit the work around other life commitments, while also being able to decide on the clients I work with to ensure they are in line with my values.

All of this led to me deciding to start as a sole trader.

So I’m celebrating this milestone: one year since I started the path that has led me to where I am now!