7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Freelancing as a Stay-At-Home Parent

I’ve been a stay-at-home working dad for most of my career. I only had an office job for 3 months after graduating college. I would spend 45 minutes each morning taking a train into the city to a video production studio, where I would spend 8 hours per day assistant video editing local shows for $12/hour.

I thought I was making good money, having been used to $9/hour in my student jobs. It’s clear to me now that if every college kid knew they could freelance their way through school, they wouldn’t have any student loan debt. Anyways, there are 5 things I wish I had known before deciding to freelance at home as a parent. Even if I knew those things, I would still do it. I have no regrets for deciding to work at home. I could never go back to an office job.

However, if I knew what I know now, I would have had an easier time in those first couple of years. The truth is that I couldn’t have known what I know now because I was a different person and I’m growing and learning. So again, I have no regrets. This isn’t coming from a place of wishing and longing for the ability to go back in time to save myself stress. I fully believe that we can’t truly start something with the knowledge we’re not supposed to have yet. This is because we haven’t grown enough yet to have that knowledge. But my intention with this article is to help YOU learn from my lessons, so you don’t have to make the same mistakes that I did.

It is said that “A smart person learns from their own mistakes; a wise person learns from someone else’s mistakes. But the wisest learn from someone else’s successes.” - John C Maxwell. I hope that you can learn from my mistakes and successes as a freelancing dad. That said, here’s what I wish I knew before I started freelancing as a stay-at-home parent:

1. My skill that I was selling as a service was not enough to make money

I knew how to shoot and edit videos. I did not know how to communicate the value of that skill to other people, so I struggled to find clients. My advice here is to learn sales, embrace sales as a good thing, and get out of your comfort zone to practice every day until you’re finally closing deals with clients.

2. Your kids want to be allowed to come into your workspace, so let them in.

I thought it would be easy to shut my door and then not hear from my kids all day while I worked. Nope. “Dad, can you play?” “Dad, when are you going to be done?” “What are you doing now?” “I just want some time with you” “Mom is nursing Emmett, so I’m bored.” And the list goes on and on. For a while, I would get frustrated and push my oldest son away energetically by my tone of voice, telling him things like “I’m working, I can’t play.” and “let me work. I have to work.”

The problem with those short-handed phrases is that it made it seem like I would always be working. There was no indication to my son that there was a stopping point when I would be able to spend time with him, so of course, he’s going to keep bothering me to take a break. The better thing to say would have been, “I have to work for 1 more hour, then I’ll be taking a break and me and you can go on a bike ride.” Or “What is something you want to do when I’m done.” With that approach, I’m making a solid plan to spend time with him so he’s being heard and validated in his desire to spend time with me. That always worked so much better when I finally figured that one out.

Also, that didn’t mean that he had to leave the office. 2 years into my freelancing career with my son banging on the door and wanting to come in, I finally decided to just open the door and let him spend time in the office whenever he wanted. This was only if I wasn’t on video calls or important meetings with clients, of course. I created an office space for him. We got him his own desk, and set up his Legos and other projects in that space so that he could come and go as he wished to work on his own things alongside me.

Here’s a picture of his desk as I’m writing this:

As you can see, my son is hard at work. He even calls it “work” to copy me. When I finally let him come into my workspace and have his own designated area, he stopped coming to my desk as much wanting to play with my computer. He just wanted to be in my space and talk to me about random things while he played on his own.

There was an adjustment for me to be okay with having some level of distraction as he would occasionally ask me questions and tell me what’s going on in his world, but for the most part, I was able to stay more focused and get more done than when I had to keep dealing with pushing him away and keeping him out. Rejecting his presence took way more effort and was more distracting and it even sometimes led to tantrums and toys getting thrown at my office door.

3: Having a consistent work schedule is so important

I thought going into it, that working from home meant that I would work in the middle of the night if I wanted to, on weekends, and just whenever I had extra time. I thought it would be easy to switch up my schedule and work whenever. But I soon learned that as a parent with a family, routine and schedule is very important. My kids thrive off routine and consistency.

If I work consistent hours with a typical schedule every day and week, my wife and kids have an easier time working around that. I’m predictable. They can plan their day around when they know Dad will be done working. I’m not the dad who’s just always working, which leads me to the next one...

4: Open and close your business each day

When I first started my freelance business, my head was always in work, even when I wasn’t working. My wife eventually called me out for it and said, “Where are you? Why are you not here with us?” I told her that I was thinking about work stuff. Then she said, “Then what are you thinking about all day when you’re in your office working? You need to be present when you’re with us or you might as well just go back to that office. That way we aren’t thinking you’re with us when you’re really not.”

She was right. If my brain was still at work, then I would have been better off just physically going back into my home office because I wasn’t really spending time with them. Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of always working. They can’t turn it off, which leads to burnout and relationship conflict. It’s not worth sidelining the people in your life to get more money, ever, even if you’ve convinced yourself that the money is for them. Your wife and kids don’t want money, they want you. That’s a powerful lesson I learned about a year into starting my freelance business, a lesson my wife had to teach me.

So, what I started doing along with having consistent business hours was to treat it like I had an actual office business building that closed at a certain time. So, I made an open and closed sign. One side was green with the word “Open” and on the other was red with “Closed.” This helped my son have a more visual cue as to when Dad was working. But it also helped my own brain leave work at work. It’s so much easier when you’re working at home to fall into the trap of your brain always staying at work, since the physical location of your work is in your house. So, you have to go the extra mile to create physical barriers and reminders so that you turn work off when you’re done so you can be present with your family.

When I was done with work for the day or on a lunch break, I would turn the sign to closed and it literally helped my brain leave work and “go home.” I stopped feeling guilty for not being present with my family. My wife and kids had an easier time with me working at home as well, and were able to support me more.

5: You can’t just take time off spontaneously, whenever you want

Many want-to-be freelancers are under the impression that when they’re their own boss, they can just randomly take time off or go out of town and not work and just work when they feel like it. That couldn’t be falser. When you’re freelancing, you’re not committed to your employer, but you are committed to your clients. You are accountable to your clients to produce work and deliver on time. So, if you’re going to take time off, you need to plan for it at least a couple of weeks in advance just like you would in a normal job because you have to make sure that all the projects still get done on time.

Now you can more easily take a couple hours off to address a personal need to run some errands or do a local family activity on a weekday, as long as you’re ahead enough, but you can’t even do that all the time. You need to have a default schedule that you stick to most of the time for your family’s sake as much as your client’s sake. Your clients also want to know when they can rely on communicating with you and getting a response. You must tell them what your normal work schedule is, or they’ll treat you as if you’re always working. I made mistakes at the beginning of not being clear about that and I had some clients expecting me to get work done at 10pm at night.

If you want to be successful, you need to work normal business hours most of the time.

6: Separate your business and personal finances

For the first year of freelancing, I thought it would be perfectly fine to use my personal bank account for all my business expenses and for clients paying me. Then I regretted it when tax season came along and I had to go through hundreds of transactions for the year, many of which were personal transactions. I had to find the business ones and isolate those so I could deduct them on my taxes. I also had to distinguish between business income and money that go deposited from savings accounts or transferred from other accounts or gifts. It was a huge headache! Plus, it’s not safe. If I ever found myself in a lawsuit in my business, they could go after my personal finances and assets. You must create at least an LLC or Corporation and open a separate business bank account where all your business expenses and invoices are processed.

Then when it’s time to do taxes, they are all one place. If you ever got audited, they would all be in one place. It protects your family and your business to separate those finances. Your office might be in your home, but your bank accounts better be separate. This one brings me to my last tip for today…

7: Include your wife in all financial decisions and planning, even if you’re the only one working

I’ve always liked handling the bills and finances, but my wife and I both realized that was a mistake when we got into $20,000 of credit card debt a year into my freelancing. As a dad who is the only income earner for my family, I had a lot of pressure to provide, but I also took on too much of the financial burden when it comes to planning and handling the finances. My wife realized that she was also being too passive towards it, thinking that because she wasn’t earning the money that somehow, she should just stay out of it. But your money needs both of your perspectives! It needs both sets of eyes. I’ve never been under the impression that the money I’ve earned is my money. I’ve always seen it as my wife and kids’ money too because we are a family. And in all honesty, my wife works harder than me. But regardless of the pride you may have as a providing dad, you must see your wife as an equal partner in your financial planning and money management. She will bring great insight into that part of your life.

Once we came together financially, I started earning more money and we started climbing out of debt. It’s okay if you decide that your wife is the one that pays the bills or tracks the budget. What matters is that you create a system together, and both people are aware at all times of the current financial situation. We had to start having financial meetings often, and we needed to create financial priorities for spending.

Financial disagreements are a leading cause of divorce, so unite with your wife now on everything money-related and stop thinking that it’s just your burden. Money stressed my wife out as much as it did me, so I would avoid telling her about our situation to not cause her more stress. And she would avoid asking. Don’t do that!

Hopefully, these 7 things will help you be more prepared than I was when I started my career as a freelancing Dad. Drop me a comment if you have any questions or stories that you want to share.