Top Advantages and Disadvantages of Being an Independent PR Consultant

I started my PR career with one of India's leading PR firms. My job profile was primarily back-office related where I had to prepare dossiers and presentations and update reports for the financial services team and assist fellow team members. Although I had no prior PR experience, my consistent drive and passion to learn kept me on toes, with some difficult challenges.

Thereafter, I had the opportunity of working with another renowned PR consultant with a step-up in my career. Herein, I learnt about the sector, about client servicing and had the opportunity of experimenting with campaigns. As a PR consultant, you have to establish and maintain relationships with an organization's target audience, the media, relevant trade media, and other opinion leaders.

What each stint made me unveil were my own preferences and clearly the lifestyle I wanted to lead. In my professional journey, I know that every client stands for its persona and conveys the same to the world. Similarly, one must know what their aims are and work right towards it to get to where you wish to see yourself. But, I've learnt one thing for sure, no matter where you are and what you wish for; you have to trust time and yourself completely.

Although, soon enough, I found myself excited about taking an entrepreneurial turn and decided to venture out on my own as an independent PR consultant.

These are the top Three Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Freelance PR Consultant

Advantages:

1 – Timing Flexibility: In today's world if you are a full time working employee, you have to be right on schedule and plan your day accordingly to give time to your employer and your client. Here we are very much flexible in managing both, as we can allot time to a particular client for hours, day or weekly.

2 – You get paid for what you do: As you know an agency charges a high fee to a brand which basically boosts the expectations of a brand and being a freelancer of what we get paid is either a project wise or fixed income which is way less than an agency charging. And we deliver the same strategy to clients

3 – High Motivation: As you are not restricted to your specific KRAs. The amount of motivation is really high when you're your own boss. There is a quote that I love following, "do something that makes you jump out of the bed." If one asks me, I'd always advice, "Hustle when you are starting with your career. Take control, when you know the time is right. Being an entrepreneur is a lot of responsibility. It seems so fancy when you hear and think about it, but it's also challenging and exciting work if you truly enjoy it."

Being a freelance PR consultant, means you have a lot of responsibility, as you are only one man show against the market trends and the brand expectations. There are some big advantages and disadvantages to that.

Disadvantages:

1 – Dealing with inconsistent of cash flow: Being working as an independent PR Consultant you need to focus on the client management and getting new business also. Sometimes there might be a situation that client payment has been delayed or you are not getting any project leads. This leads to low income for us which can be a disaster for our career as you might end up trapped again into 9 to 5 shifts.

2 – You have to be a pro at multi-tasking: As for people working in an agency, they have full-fledged support from various teams like for accounts, admin, new business development, HR etc. As a freelancer, you have to not only complete the tasks that you have to do but also look after your administrative work like generating invoices, doing accountings, your own advertising and sales, getting new business, finding resources etc.. the lists goes on. In conclusion, you have to manage the time as well for your internal work which can in between anytime.

3 – You have to be your own expert: In no time you will be handicapped with the expert advice that you can get from a more experienced person. It is very easy for a person who works in an agency, as they can have time to time brainstorming sessions.

So sit back and analyse your connections in the market, as going freelancing means there will no big agency name in your mail signature it will be just your name. "And before going in as freelance PR, you must check your PR value in the market and your PR mileage".