Coaching to Help Transition from Academia to Freelancing

Making the transition from academia to freelancing can be tough. As a former academic specialising in education, Dr Amy McKernan knows how to instill courage in students to new life experiences. However, she was still finding aspects

of her own transition from academia to freelancing challenging. Keen to own her new identity and put her teaching experiences to good use in the freelancing industry, Amy  sought support from Unashamedly Creative via the Creative Change Coaching Program.

She wanted to overcome self-doubt and perfectionism while creating a business that reflected her skills and aspirations. With a strong desire to build a course on course creation, she needed help gaining clarity, confidence, and practical strategies to achieve her goals.

Objective

To support Amy’s transition from academia to freelance by:

• Create space to thank and move on from her academic career.
• Addressing mindset challenges like imposter syndrome and perfectionism.
• Defining her ideal business model, target clients, and services.
• Enhancing her confidence in marketing, communication, and course building.
• Establishing actionable goals for her business and personal wellbeing.
• Create a great course that other freelancers could use to learn the art of educating.

Execution

We worked together on:

1. Mindset Work: Identifying and breaking down imposter syndrome habits and internal pressures, helping Amy embrace her new career path with confidence.
2. Business Strategy: Clarifying Amy’s vision of an ideal business by creating target client personas and developing a strategy for services and packages tailored to their needs.
3. Marketing Skills: Taking her excellent writing skills and conversational tones to places they had not really been previously like LinkedIn, website copy, and blogging. The goal was to reflect Amy’s expertise while building confidence in her voice.
4. Audience Understanding: Using the Buying Cycle framework, we mapped out how to connect with her intended audience effectively at each stage of their decision-making journey.
5. Course Building Confidence: Encouraging Amy to start designing her course on course creation through working on a 45 minute webinar presentation for a freelance audience.
6. SMART Goals: Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals for Amy’s finances, business, health, and course development to create a balanced and sustainable work-life approach.

Results

Amy successfully defined her ideal business, complete with clear personas, and a service strategy. She gained confidence in her ability to market herself authentically, using LinkedIn and website content to connect with potential clients.

She also began developing her course on course creation with a strong sense of purpose and direction. And a successful pilot test of Amy teaching for freelancers was run with sixteen freelancers in attendance. The event received overwhelmingly positive feedback.

By applying the Buying Cycle framework, Amy developed a communication strategy that resonated with her audience.

Through targeted mindset work, Amy is challenging her wobble moments by reconnecting with her teacher strengths. She’s embraced her freelancing identity, and moved forward with confidence and actionable goals. The transition from academia to freelancing is becoming a new and positive journey of empowerment and clarity.

Want to make the transition from academia to freelancing?

If you have been affected by the University of Wollongong redundancies, you may be eligible for a free hour coaching session with me. Head here to check out my beach coaching at Windang beach for details.

What Amy had to say: 

My coaching session with Bek was brilliant and enabled me to do some much needed and very real reflection on where I was at with my business and my life. Bek has a deep and socially nuanced understanding of the world and of the people in it, which allows her to very quickly and insightfully get to the crux of any number of issues in a trauma-informed way. She had the capacity to really understand what I was dealing with – more than I did at the time – and to communicate this sensitively. She also, crucially, shared practical strategies that I have since used to both grow my business and manage my own emotional state through the difficult times.

Or book in for the Creative Change Coaching Program with Unashamedly Creative now.