Sara Tasker: 'Being self-employed means my future is wide open'
The Instagram queen shares her thoughts on why every freelancer needs their own audience
As Sara Tasker will tell you herself, Instagram changed her life. In 2013, Sara started a photo-a-day project to document her maternity leave from her NHS job. After a couple of years, what had started as a creative outlet for her experiences of first-time motherhood, had morphed into a new and unchartered career path for Sara.
Now, Sara runs the online business Me and Orla, teaching content creators, freelancers and creative entrepreneurs how to turn their passions into successful businesses. I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest on her brilliant podcast, Hashtag Authentic and last year, Sara wrote a best-selling book of the same name, which is a practical guide for anyone who wants to get better at Instagram.
I wanted to interview Sara for TPF because she has a positive, but nonetheless realistic, attitude towards self-employment. As a chronic pain sufferer, designing a job that she can do that’s in tune with her needs was more of a necessity than a luxury. From a business perspective, the most important lesson I’ve personally learned from Sara is the principle of having a central purpose for your freelancing business. A core thread that runs through all the formats you do your work in. For Sara, that’s helping others use social media to change their lives in the way it has for her.
In this interview, Sara shares her thoughts on how writers can experiment on Instagram, how self-employment can help those suffering from a chronic illness and the value of building your own audience.
Stick around until the end of the post because I’ve asked a question at the bottom that I’d love to hear your comments on.
TPF: You’re known for the beautiful images you post on Instagram, but you’re very much also a writer. How can writers make better use of Instagram in a way that adds value to their freelance business?
Sara Tasker: Writers are at a huge advantage in the digital world because communication is our craft. There are all the obvious places to showcase the written word – captions, tweets, newsletters – but there are so many more subtle applications, too. A great Instagram photo or Story needs a narrative to draw the viewer in. A caption that starts with a bang is more likely to hook the reader's attention. Condensing big ideas down to finite characters, creating emotion, knowing what's topical – social media is the writer's playground!
I love seeing writers use Instagram for micro journaling or journalism. By sharing first hand, without an editor interrupting that chain of communication, your audience gets to know you and your work so much more intimately, which means they're so much more invested in all you do.
The career you’ve made for yourself didn’t exist even ten years ago. How do you deal with the uncertainty of not only forging your own path, but also one in an unknown industry?
In an odd way, I've come to appreciate the uncertainty. When we're young there's this huge landscape of possibilities for our lives, but gradually we're forced to keep narrowing them down until we're reduced to a single career track. Back when I was working my NHS day job I could see my projection for the next 40 years – which to some might mean security, but to me, it just felt like a constraint. Being self-employed means my future is wide open again, and I get to choose what I want to do with it every day.
I've come to appreciate the uncertainty
The bedrock that keeps me from 3 am terrors is my own self-belief. I've had the skills and creativity to get this far, and so I try to trust that I'll be able to do it again in future. Sometimes I do wish for a person ahead of me to show me the way, but we learn so much more when we figure it out for ourselves.
Lots of us who work online (journalists, writers, photographers etc) resist calling ourselves content creators. Do you think there are concepts from your world we could be applying to ours?
This is such a great question, and one I think we all need to be asking more. As a general rule, I think online freelancers could be doing more to develop their audience and reach, and content creators could be putting more into honing their creative craft.
One huge takeaway is the way that content creators own and directly nurture their audience. They don't see establishing their reach as a sideline to their main work activities – it's integral in all they do, and it's how they future-proof their income.
It's a thorny subject for many because, of course, content creators have diluted a lot of the skills that online freelancers have made a craft of. But the uncomfortable truth is that general audiences don't really seem to care that much – a professionally stunning photograph and a quick iPhone Insta snap have the same potential leverage in this brave new digital world.
Bloggers and influencers embrace that fact. No fact-checkers, no editor fixing that rambling third paragraph. They're happy to throw up that B- work because they know that their real currency is their audience and that the content is worth more than the perfection of the packaging. Because the numbers make or break them, they become experts in what their audience likes – trying, improving, and responding to demand.
I believe every creative freelancer should have an email list
This all might feel incredibly unfair when you're a highly trained creative with a professional skill set – but you can still have the edge. Just as the influencers are doing a B- version of your job, freelancers need to borrow the most essential skills from the content creator world. Like it or not, the end game is the same for nearly all of us here: how do we make content that people will spend time engaging with?
I believe every creative freelancer should have an email list. Grow it by whatever means necessary – delightful freebies, paid Pinterest ads, passing around a signup sheet at your speaking events. Then, if you like, you can look at ways you can deliver your work directly to that audience, without waiting for a middle man to hire or commission you first.
You don’t live in a major city. What do you say to people who think it’s not possible to build a successful freelance career or small business in the countryside?
I honestly think it hardly matters in the digital age. Skype and Zoom make meetings quicker and easier, and I've made just as many significant connections via Twitter as I have at big swanky events. Yes, everything still happens in London, but being out of the fray makes it much easier to gauge what is really worth your time and travel.
You have to let go of everything the capitalist, puritanical work ethic has taught you in order to make peace with your body
There are still some interesting distinctions: events still sell out 10 times faster in London, because people seem to just generally invest in themselves less easily once they're North of Birmingham. A lot of people still assume I'm London-based because of my business and forget to factor in my travel time and costs. But the hardest part, if I'm really honest, is that there's no Deliveroo here yet.
What advice do you have for people struggling with chronic pain about how they can build a career that works for them and their health rather than against it?
You have to let go of everything the capitalist, puritanical work ethic has taught you in order to make peace with your body. Typical paid employment magnified my problems tenfold; I never felt so disabled as when I was trying to work 8.5 hour active days on top of a lengthy commute.
By the time I went freelance, I'd acquired so many negative beliefs about myself and work – that I was lazy, too broken, that I couldn't do hard things. In building a business and working week around my individual strengths, I was able to realise that it was the one-size-fits-all system that was truly at fault. I'm a big advocate for people with mental illness, chronic illness and disability to take their work into their own hands whenever possible. We're made to feel like it's riskier for these groups, but the conventional workplace is often unsafe in different ways.
What’s the best piece of advice you were ever given when you started out on your own?
That three things on your to-do list a day is generally enough. I fought this so hard for so long - but of course, it turned out to be absolutely true. Any more than three and I'm perpetually carrying things over and never feel like I'm 'done'. Now, if my 3 things are crossed off the for the day, I'll finish early, and am able to rest knowing I've done enough.
💡Question of the week: Do you need to build an audience?
I found Sara’s insights into audience-building super interesting. I wanted to open the idea up to a wider discussion between us all. Answering in the comments below, let me know if you have your own audience, either through an email list or other social media platform. Is building an audience something you think is important for your freelance business and if so, what’s holding you back from doing it?
I’ve really noticed a direct correlation between freelancers I would consider the most ‘successful’ and having an engaged audience across social media. I think taking the time to grow a Twitter and Instagram presence, perhaps even having a podcast, is two-fold in that it makes you more visible to industry but is also representative of a grafter who isn’t afraid to try and learn additional skills. I’m keen to grow my own channels but having been restricted in a staff job I’ve not been able to do as much as I wanted. However it’s definitely a focus area for me.