The Friendly Freelancer has many readers who – just like you! – are freelancing in a way that works for them. From now on, we’ll occasionally send you interviews with people in our freelance community whom we find inspiring.
I’ve envied freelance strategist Nabil Aniss since we met at a co-working space a couple of years ago. Talking to him, I always get the sense that he’s very much in control – of the money he makes, the companies he works with and how he spends his workweek. For me, he’s a deluxe freelancer, someone who instead of “yessing” every assignment that comes his way, only accepts work if and when it suits him. I sat down with Nabil to find out how he reached this higher freelance plane.
You told me a while ago that you only work three days a week for clients. Is that still the case?
“Yes. Although I’m flexible about it. If there’s some kind of emergency and the agency I work with at the moment needs me, I’ll do a full workweek.”
Why did you decide to limit your availability to three days a week?
“I tried out a lot of different options over my career; I worked for a start-up, I worked for a very large corporation. But it was always the same thing. I was tired all the time; I didn’t see my friends; I worked seven days a week. And I also was exhausted, intellectually speaking, because there was no time to recharge. Maybe it was also a little bit about my personal politics. I love what I do, but I didn’t want to be defined by my work any more. But none of this happened overnight; it was a reflection process that took years.”
What do you do on those other two days?
“It varies. I try not to fall into this thing where I absolutely have to be productive. Sometimes it’s photography, sometimes I write. I’m also working on a podcast about social mobility with a friend called “La Grande Classe”, which will come out later this year. And sometimes I don’t do anything at all. I go to a café and have a coffee at two in the afternoon. That’s pure luxury. To think to yourself: ‘Fuck, I’m so bored; I’m not doing a thing, but it’s so good.’ Honestly, it’s also in those moments that everything starts to come together in my brain and that I get my work ideas.”
For me, true luxury is precisely your ability to make that choice to only work three days a week. Do you agree?
“It may seem like a luxury position, but I never conceptualised it that way. It’s just that this is what works best for me; this is what I expect from freelancing. I make a very good living, but I’ve also accepted that I don’t need to make much more [than what I make working three days a week].”
So how did you get to this position?
“Getting to this kind of place can never be your plan from the beginning, I think. When you start out, you take whatever assignment people choose to give you.
Often, people look for tricks or ways to “hack the system”. But the way to make it through as a freelancer isn’t sexy at all; it’s not fancy. There is no trick or secret. You just have to work more than everyone else.”
Do you mean in terms of quantity? More hours?
“Yes, unfortunately, there’s no way around it. And that’s a horrible thing to say because it means pushing people to be more productive. I’m not saying everyone should do this, but it’s the approach that’s worked for me. For instance, early on I was paid for a four-day assignment. But I chose to work on it for six days. It also means working weekends, making sacrifices, getting up really early and going to bed very late.”
The investment you made into your career early on – working so hard and so much – is what today allows you to be selective in whom you work with and how much you work?
“Yes, you need to learn a lot so that the quality of your work goes up. But there are thousands of other ways to go about it. A lot of people will for instance enrol in a professional training.
There are a lot of average freelancers so for a client who needs to pick someone, it’s going to be pretty simple. He is going to pick the person who’s most going to overdeliver. So, you just have to be a bit better than whatever the average is, but I think that goes for a lot of things in life.
Besides the amount of hours you work, I think it’s also important to have a craft.”
What do you mean?
“You need to be able to do a lot of things, but you also need to have a speciality – one thing that you do really well and that no-one does better than you. Expertise is what will make clients come to you. Whereas people who do a bit of everything are called to fix leaks.
For example, if I look at my own work as a strategist I have always focused on one thing that I loved and that I studied in university – sociology. So, I told myself: I’m going to be really good at understanding people and trends in society.”
What does a freelance strategist actually do? How does sociology come into it?
“My role is to understand what drives people. What’s their emotional response to a particular issue? What pushes them to buy a €1,500 MacBook? I’m currently mostly working for an agency called Air and my job is to brief the agency’s creatives on what message or key insight they should hang their publicity campaign on. I give them the message and the framework; the creatives translate it into an ad campaign.”
Can you give me an example?
“I for instance worked on a campaign for PartenaMut, a health insurance fund that wanted to revamp its image. This was at the height of the corona pandemic, so there was a lot of talk at that time about solidarity and healthy people helping out those who are sick. We thought: ‘Well, you don’t have to do a fancy rebranding; you just have to go back to the core of what you are, namely a mutual insurance company.’ That means that when you take out a policy with them, you help others out when they’re sick; and when you’re sick, others will help you out. It’s a campaign that did really well and that really resonated with people.”
Anything else you want to tell the people?
“Yes. Don’t work for free. Don’t. Do. It.”
Written by Linda A. Thompson
Know someone who would be perfect for this interview series? Shoot us an email at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com and explain in 1-2 sentences why they could inspire other freelancers. In keeping with our community-building philosophy and our mission to support each other, we’ve decided you can’t nominate yourself. 🤓