Two Years Of Building A Community Of Gig Workers
It’s officially been two years since we started The Mill.
The pandemic was getting ready for year 2 when my co-founder Shalvi Mangaokar Biswas and I partnered up. I had been freelancing for a while and Shalvi, a brand new mother, was getting ready to explore the world of freelancing after having spent a decade in the corporate world. We both had a couple of clients who we had been working with individually, and since work was slowing down in the pandemic this partnership came in at divine timing.
Our first few clients required us to make social media calendars & handle their social media pages. The work was great but the money did not allow us to hire any resources, so Canva was our best friend. At a time when colleagues were being promoted to lead regional and national teams, it was a little discomforting to get back to the basics and put in the hard work, especially because in our minds we were still not ‘founders.’
We hired a designer in month 3 and we are extremely proud to share that he is still a part of this adventure, stepping into year 3 with us. We started collaborating with other freelancers who would help us with social media page management. While it felt empowering to realise that we could split financial resources and slowly build this community of gig workers that we had set out to build, interactions made us realise that most of our work would now involve people management. We shifted focus from branding ourselves to managing people, because if there is one thing that we did really well is that we adapted.
The focus was to hire the best talent, which meant several rounds of vibe checks, interviews and 1:1s. The first two months of starting The Mill were relatively easy compared to what followed in the next 6 months of hiring. Bad hiring decisions made us question ourselves, drown in self doubt and lose motivation. We tried to keep the focus on existing partnerships but bad hires were setting us back emotionally, things that we could not talk about at that point. But we continued to adapt, because we were good at it.
As we tried processing & moving on from these emotional damages and tried setting up systems at the workplace, while seeking out new work and managing existing clients, we did not lose track of our main goal- to empower the freelance community. We knew what it was like to step out into this world and get work by yourself with no knowledge of industry standards or contracts or anything to be honest. We made sure we were connecting 1:1 with all the freelancers who we were working to understand their professional concerns. As it often happens in the world of freelancing, personal lives were closely tied to the professional ones, which is why we even stepped in to assist with personal troubles when asked. The first 6 months of running a business together made us realise just how much needed to be done and we took a conscious decision to pause all plans of a website, newsletter, social media page etc because other things needed more attention.
Year 1 went by and we started feeling confident and comfortable. Work was flowing in because our existing clients were happy with what we were doing, and word of mouth marketing has continued to help us since then. Friends and colleagues supported us by sending us leads, introducing us to their network, helping us set our brand assets and what not. We haven’t forgotten any of the small acts of kindness and we will grateful *forever* to all those entrepreneurs, partners, ex-colleagues and friends who stayed by us as we figured out how to run a business.
I know it sounds like we were awesome and had all the support and got things right all the time. We really wish that was the case.
We made a lot of mistakes, and all of that started manifesting towards the end of 2022. We realised how important it was to be firm with our boundaries because in an industry that is based on relationships, it gets tricky to navigate through situations especially when there is money involved. Adding value to someone’s business should not come at the cost of personal discomfort. Not all friendships come with the emotional maturity needed for the professional space. Money is a sensitive subject and can ruin relationships built on strong foundations. People will take advantage of your empathy. These were some of the ugly truths that we had to deal with, but we fought together on one team.
Work slowed down for us between September 2022 to February 2023, but because we loved working on our projects we showed up with the same enthusiasm with which we had signed up for the work. All that free time that we now had was spent in learning new skills and finally getting to our website. At a time when the money flow was not looking too good it felt like a big risk putting in that money to build our brand, but showing up to work on it meant that we were not here to give up.
When we started, we focused on talking about work life balance and flexibility of work. Don’t get us wrong, we still believe in it. But 2 years of entrepreneurship have made us understand the nuances of remote work. We understood that the idea of freelancing was glorified as a flexible, less serious career option, which is why we made a conscious decision to stop talking about this because those who were working with us understood that work life balance focuses on finding balance in your daily lives and not just on weekends, and that balance may mean different things to everyone. We have team members who travel extensively but still meet all the deadlines because they understand the importance of proactiveness while working remotely. We have been able to function smoothly even with freelancers in different time zones because they have understood the importance of time management. (Maybe this is something that we should talk about in our next attempt to brand ourselves 😃)🫣
Being able to sustain this model of putting together a team of remote workers helped us connect with some great talent that has now become a core team for us. Having a great team was also one of the reasons why we powered through those 6 months — it feels good to be backed by trustworthy people when you are starting to lose trust in yourself. Today, it is this team that gives us the confidence to grow because we know that we will do it together.
“But this business model is not sustainable! How will you scale?” This is the most commonly asked question, and for good reason. But allow us to take this opportunity to explain, like we always do, that our goal is to build brands and continue being involved in projects, instead of chasing a high clientele. This is a conscious decision we’ve made, and it helps us work on things we enjoy. Slow and steady, and wholesome, that’s the game plan and we’re adapting along the way.
In a set up like ours a lot of things function on goodwill and trust. There are chances of freelancers being poached by clients or freelancers approaching the clients directly, but we know this is a part and parcel of every business and there are two things that we have to say to this- when you care for your people and trust them, they usually appreciate the relationship and acknowledge the support. And 2) we are confident of the value that we add to our clients and our relationship with them and our understanding of consumer behaviour and brand strategy has helped us thrive.
We have all read enough about entrepreneurship not being for the faint hearted but these 2 years, especially the last 6 months have made us realise the depth of this sentence. It looks great on social media, using #bossbabe #bosslife feel empowering, but can we also take a minute to appreciate the not so empowering things? Like showing up on days when you don’t feel confident or believing that you deserve to be paid your worth when you are marinating in self doubt? Those sleepless nights spent wondering if you will get those payments that are owed to you, those mental health breaks in the middle of hectic work days because you need to ground yourself in times of financial instability, those hard months where you find it difficult to socialize because you have not taken back salaries, those breakdowns because a loved one lent you money and you’re overwhelmed to see them support you, those random thoughts when you trying to sleep revolving around “should I get a job?”
The last 6 months may have been tough for us, but we see the reason now. We started building this community without any knowledge of running a business. In the last 6 months we’ve learnt some of the most important things needed to run a business- how to calculate tax, how to organize money cycles, why GST matters, why the date of the invoice matters, how timely payments can help save tax, everything! Mistakes were made, but we have no regrets because we learnt things the hard way. It feels good to be at a point where clearing taxes and being prepared for the next cycle feels empowering.
We have paid our vendors from our own pockets, broken investments with the hope that we would be reimbursed for it, relentlessly followed up for delayed payments like it was our only job, seen 14hr days at work, handled SOS calls at odd times, made bad partnership decisions, over-committed to work… But we have also enjoyed a general peace of mind knowing that we get enough time to get in our steps, workouts, naps, coffee breaks and even holidays. We have built stable, secure relationships with our clients who have understood our commitment to their work, and have supported us by referring us to their network. We have had the time to learn new skills. We have learnt so much about the world of financial management! We have met so many startup founders and freelancers and stayed connected with them through these months. We have been able to build a life that we can enjoy on our own terms and some of the choices have not been easy, but we know everything has been worth it.
As we complete 2 years we want to celebrate our strength, resourcefulness and commitment to a shared dream, and we don’t know what year 3 will bring along but for now we are grateful, hopeful, happy and healthy. Blessed with a great team, a fun bunch of clients and a supportive ecosystem that believes in us. Thank you 🙏
Also we are finally launching our website this week😃
