Namrata shares her thoughts on the founder’s journey of discovering what’s next for Keemiya Creatives.
I have been a freelancer for 15 years now. That’s long enough to have seen most of the usual ups and downs of running a one-person business, and to have built the systems that make freelancing a little less precarious.
I have contracts and agreements in place. I document my work. I have shared folders, systems for ongoing work, and retainer arrangements. I have learned to plan for irregular income, taxes, periods of no work, and all the other things that come with running a business on your own.
There was one thing, though, that I had never really thought about: What happens to my clients if I suddenly can’t work?
Notes from a Freelancer’s Diary
A few months ago, an unexpected health crisis made me think about it for the first time.
I don’t want to get into the medical side of it, and that’s not really what this is about anyway. I live with chronic conditions, and one of the less obvious things that comes with that is uncertainty. You can plan your week, your workload, and your deadlines, and then something happens, and those plans are suddenly irrelevant. You don’t always know how your body is going to respond, or when you will realistically be able to get back to doing what you normally do.
I am back to work now and have recovered well, thankfully. But during those months, I found myself thinking about my business in a way I hadn’t before.
The timing was particularly uncomfortable. I had recently taken on a couple of new clients, and their work was still pending when things took a turn. I had only just onboarded them, so there wasn’t years of history or an established rhythm between us yet. Their deadlines were approaching, and I didn’t know when I would realistically be able to take up the work.
If I knew I would be back in two weeks, I could ask for an extension. If I knew it would take a month, I could plan around that. But when you don’t know, even communicating a revised timeline becomes difficult.
What concerned me was the client experience. These were people who had only just trusted me with their work. They had their own plans and deadlines, and they needed some clarity about what was happening with a project they had handed over to me.
And, after living with chronic health issues for a long time, I also didn’t want to get into the habit of explaining my health to clients every time something went wrong. I don’t think clients need a running commentary on my health. They need to know what is happening with their work. That distinction became very clear to me.
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A Freelancer’s Nightmare
This wasn’t the first time I had fallen ill while having active clients. I have had periods in the past when I couldn’t work normally, and even times when something as basic as getting on a phone call was difficult.
Those experiences had already taught me that, as a freelancer, there is very little distance between the person and the business. When you are the person doing the work, managing the relationship, and making the decisions, your absence can have an immediate effect on a client.
This time, however, I was looking at it differently. Over the years, I had built a strong client base. Many of my clients have been with me for a long time, and I have been fortunate to have relationships with people who are supportive and appreciative of my work. That made me realise that my business isn’t just a collection of projects sitting in folders.
There are relationships. There is knowledge accumulated over the years. There are commitments I have made and context that comes from having worked with someone repeatedly. There are clients who know how I work and whose businesses I understand because we have worked together for a long time.
And that led me to a question I had somehow never asked myself in 15 years as a freelancer: What happens to all of this if I can’t come back? That’s when I started thinking about succession.
We tend to associate succession planning with larger companies. There are founders, directors, employees, and shareholders. There are structures and hierarchies, so it makes sense to think about what happens when one person leaves.
As freelancers, we don’t tend to think about ourselves in those terms. We are the business. We are the person who signs the agreement, does the work, talks to the client, and knows why a particular decision was made three months ago.
After 15 years, a freelance business becomes much bigger than the work you are doing this week.
Mine has accumulated years of client relationships, processes, documentation, project knowledge, and commitments. And while I had done a reasonable job of making sure that the practical side of the business wasn’t entirely dependent on what was in my head, I had never thought about who could actually step in if I couldn’t. So I started thinking about that.
Succession Planning for a Freelancer
I have identified a few freelancers whose work I respect and whose approach I know and trust. People whose work resonates with mine and whom I would be comfortable recommending to a client if I ever needed to.
I am not talking about someone taking over my business tomorrow. And I am not talking about finding someone to become a replacement for me. It’s simply about having people I trust who could potentially take on a project or help a client if I were ever unable to continue. That distinction is important to me.
I haven’t done this because I am planning to stop working. I am back at work, and things are moving in the right direction again. But the experience made me realise that there is a difference between planning for the business to continue when things are going well and planning for the business to continue when the person at its centre suddenly can’t work. It also changed the way I think about all the boring business infrastructure I have accumulated over the years.
The documentation, agreements, shared folders, and systems were always there to make my own work easier and keep the business organised. Now I see another purpose in them. If someone else ever has to step in, that information can help them understand what needs to happen without having to reconstruct 15 years of freelancing from scratch. More importantly, it can make a difficult situation easier for the client.
I think this is something we don’t talk about enough with freelancers.
We are taught to plan our finances. We learn about saving for lean periods, managing taxes, pricing our services, finding clients, and building a sustainable business. All of that is necessary.
But what happens when the freelancer themselves becomes unavailable for an extended period?
It doesn’t have to be a health crisis. It could be an accident, a family emergency, caregiving responsibilities, bereavement, or simply a point in life when you realise you can’t continue working in the same way. None of us knows what is around the corner.
I don’t think every freelancer needs a complicated succession plan. But I do think it is worth considering what would happen to your active clients and commitments if you suddenly couldn’t work, and whether there is someone you would trust to step in.
For me, the biggest shift has been in how I think about the business I have built. After 15 years, I don’t see it simply as my work and my income anymore. It is also a set of relationships, commitments, knowledge, and trust that I have built with other people. And perhaps that means that succession planning isn’t something only large companies need to think about.
Maybe freelancers need to think about it too.
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