It's just over a week since a year to the day I left my previous job to work as a comedian full time. It's been a year of ups and downs and I've learnt a lot, most of which I tried to document in this episode of the podcasts.
The questions I covered:- Did I make any money this year?
- How much of my runway have I used?
- How has my lifestyle changed?
- How are my hands doing? My health in general?
- How is the podcast doing?
I also talked about these observations:- Being a freelance entertainer is all about maintaining relationships, and weeding out the people who aren’t worth your time.
- Waiting for venues / companies to pay you can be a nightmare
- You need to be on top of your calendar / schedule, and be thinking ahead. You will get very frustrated with other people’s lack of organisation
- You’re not obligated to reply to people straight away
- You’re going to feel like you’re shouting into the void a lot
- You might find planning activities outside of work too exhausting to bother with
- Every day is different. You’ll experience some of the weirdest gigs and jobs that you never saw yourself doing
- You’re going to experience hella ups and downs. You’ll feel like you’re taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back a lot.
- You have to put yourself out there - you will experience growth from this
- You will often need to spend money to make money
- You will really quickly learn the value of your work, and hearing “no” will no longer be devastating
- You will probably still have a lot of sleepless nights
- You will feel a new type of satisfaction having paid your bills off the back of your art