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View Kate Bassett’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members. I've been a writer and editor for the past two decades, specialising in business, entrepreneurship and diversity.
- 500+
- Freelance
- 3.4K
- London, England, United Kingdom
View Kate Bassett’s profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members. Writer; stage and screen script consultant and dramaturg; journalist, researcher, platform talks host; biographer (of Jonathan Miller) · Experience: Freelance · Education: Hertfordshire & Essex High School; Westminster School, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge · Location: United Kingdom · 156 ...
- 156
- 159
- Freelance
- United Kingdom
I craft compelling content for companies ranging from Channel 4 to luxury fashion brand the fold, and HOST the sound advice: entrepreneurs unfiltered PODCAST FOR sage. i am a senior content editor at the financial times and a contributing editor at vogue business. get in touch at kate@katebassett.net.
- Saying Goodbye to Bex and Hello to Kate
- Season One Highlights
- Getting Into Business Journalism and Entrepreneurship
- Taking The Plunge Into Freelance Work
- Working as A Freelancer Means An Unpredictable Workload
- Finding The Right Fee as A Freelancer
- Top Tips If You’Re Just Starting Your Freelance Journey
- Finding Your Gold Or Glory Balance
- How to Prepare For Maternity Leave as A Freelancer
- Putting Into Your Pension When You Have A Limited Company
Bex Burn-Callander:
Today is bittersweet for me. I’m about to waddle off on maternity leave for a few months. And while I’m really excited about my new arrival and the opportunity to spend some time with the family, I’m really going to miss this show. I’m leaving you in really safe hands, however. Stepping into the breach is a fantastic journalist and podcaster, Kate Bassett, who is similarly obsessed with entrepreneurs and startups. On today’s episode, we’re going to meet Kate, and together we’re going to bring...
Kate Bassett:
Thanks, Bex. I’m so excited to be here. How are you?
Bex Burn-Callander:
And I don’t know if you’ve been listening to the show, but are there any particular highlights or guests that we’ve had on that you’ve really enjoyed?
Kate Bassett:
They’ve all been brilliant, and I think they’re all so diverse with different stories to share. And I love how they talk about some of their big challenges and how they’ve overcome adversity. That’s what always really interests me, how you get over those big hurdles. What have been your top stories from season one? Who have you loved interviewing?
Bex Burn-Callander:
And you’ve been a business journalist for many years, but you’ve been focused on entrepreneurs for quite a lot of that. So tell me how you ended up in this space. Obviously, we’re passionate about these kinds of stories, these human stories, which must have been the lure, but how did you end up writing about these people?
Kate Bassett:
You know what? I have just always loved magazines and just have devoured content. So actually, I was rummaging around in the attic the other day, and I came across these My Little Pony magazines I had from the mid-eighties. So I must have been about seven or eight. It was 30p an issue, and I was a subscriber. And I’d get my fortnightly mag, and I just used to love it. And then obviously moved on to mags like Smash Hits. Don’t know if anyone remembers that. Just 17, Cosmopolitan. Just absolute...
Bex Burn-Callander:
So full disclosure, we met many years ago when we were both in gainful employment at a trade mag. But I want to know how you ended up becoming a freelancer. And was it a gradual process, or did you do the two feet, take the plunge style, I’ve had enough of being paid on time every month, I’m ready for anxiety and stress?
Kate Bassett:
Well, actually yes, I’ve been working as a business journalist for about 20 years. And about eight years ago probably, I started taking on ad hoc freelance projects on the side. It was a real side hustle alongside employment. And then at the start of the pandemic, so in 2020, I was made redundant from Haymarket. So, at that point, my side hustle became the main gig. So I’ve been freelancing full time since then. So yeah, it wasn’t out of choice. I had to be shoved, had to be pushed off the cl...
Kate Bassett:
You mentioned that one of the reasons you went freelance was because of your unsustainable workload. So how are you finding it now? Have you had those moments? Because as a freelancer, it’s really hard to say no to work sometimes, isn’t it? Because you don’t know necessarily what the next month’s going to bring. So, I’ve certainly found there are real peaks and troughs. There are times when I’m inundated, and I’m literally working every hour of day and night. It’s like full time and a half. A...
Bex Burn-Callander:
Took me three years to find the balance. I think, for those three years, I was a hundred per cent doing up the feast and famine where you would be working every minute and evenings one month and then the next month you would have a week where you didn’t have anything on. And that sort of worked for me at the time. I had to find the balance once I had my son, who’s three and a half now, because I couldn’t work evenings anymore. Certainly when he was small, he wasn’t in nursery, so I had to hav...
Kate Bassett:
Actually, I know you and I have shared projects before, and we’re part of this network of business journalists who are all freelancing. And we’re really collaborative, and we share stuff, and we recommend each other. Also, we meet up fairly regularly and discuss how much we should be charging because I think that’s a really tricky thing as a freelancer, to know what your value is. I read this terrifying stat the other day that female freelancers are paid 19.5% less than men, which is really d...
Bex Burn-Callander:
Yeah. I think you can then encourage one another. When you’ve got our little gang of business journalists around a table, there’ll always be someone like, “No, you should not settle for that fee. You need to make sure that they pay you X or Y.” Or every year inflation rises, and you should be raising your rates. And it’s really hard to do that as a freelancer, to have the courage to say, “Look, I’m putting up my prices by 10%, 15%, whatever it is.” But you need sometimes your community behind...
Bex Burn-Callander:
What are your other freelance hacks then? What are the things that you have found have worked really well for you, as a journalist, yes, but I suppose more generally as well, for freelancers of all stripes?
Kate Bassett:
I think learning to deal with those peaks and troughs like you said, but always trying to have six months of savings at the ready. I think there’s a quote that you should always plan as if winter is coming. Especially, I also have two children. There have been times where obviously I’ve been on maternity leave, and you just really need to plan for those things and just make sure you’ve got a pot of backup money as a buffer should things go quiet. God forbid, if there’s another pandemic, you n...
Bex Burn-Callander:
I like your point about having an accountant because I was going to ask you the things that you wish you’d known earlier. I certainly wish I’d just never bothered doing my own self-assessments for the first couple of years I was freelance. It was good to learn how the whole thing worked and to educate myself a bit about what expenses I could use. But just the stress of it, I wish that I’d done that earlier. Is there anything else that you’ve learned has become invaluable for your freelance ca...
Kate Bassett:
I wish I’d been able to say no to work that wasn’t very lucrative. Sometimes there are things that are going to look really good on your CV but don’t pay the bills. They can take up a lot of time and actually, it’s not worth you doing it. And it’s hard to say no to those things. But actually, when I look back, they’ve caused a lot of stress, a lot of sleepless nights, and I’ve been paid pittance. So yeah, I think learning to say no to those things and finding those more lucrative contracts th...
Kate Bassett:
I did want to ask you Bex, obviously you’re about to go off on maternity leave. How have you prepared for that as a freelancer? How much time are you going to have off? How are you funding that time off? Because obviously, you don’t have a company to pay your maternity leave.
Bex Burn-Callander:
It’s pretty terrifying, isn’t it? For most women, well, every woman that has a family and is a freelancer is going to have to work out how she’s going to pay for her maternity leave. And the first-time round, when my son Charlie was born, we’d just bought our first flat, and my husband and I had no savings. So, I had two weeks off with Charlie, and then I continued to freelance. And it was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. It was the classic baby on one knee, laptop on the other. Vomit...
Bex Burn-Callander:
The other benefit, I think, of having a limited company is that I’m going to keep paying into my pension while I’ve got my maternity leave. That was one of the things that I wish I’d done earlier as a freelancer, it took me a good three years to even think about paying into a pension. I think that it’s a real terrifying prospect for a lot of freelancers that they are sleepwalking towards a financial future which is very uncertain. Because you’re not in an employee pension scheme, and you don’...
Kate Bassett:
There are a lot of these perks that suddenly you do lose when you come out of employment. No more pensions, no more sick pay, no more holiday pay. So as you said, you do need that financial buffer in place. And yeah, make sure you’re putting into a private pension regularly. Do you have a certain rule about what percentage of your salary you put into a pension?
Mar 15, 2010 · Peter Brook, visionary, provocateur, prophet, trickster & friend with the bluest eyes I ever saw, has left the house.“…take an empty space, call it a bare stage.
Sep 1, 2014 · Kate Bassett. 3.79. 591 ratings124 reviews. Anna O’Mally doesn’t believe in the five stages of grief. Her way of dealing with death equates to daily bouts of coffin yoga and fake-tattooing Patti Smith quotes onto her arms. Once a talented writer, Anna no longer believes words matter, until shocking discoveries– in the form of origami ...
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Kate Bassett is an arts journalist and theatre critic for The Times and has previously worked in that capacity for the Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph as well as writing reviews and features on theatre, film, books, dance and comedy for Guardian, TLS and New Statesman.
- Kate Bassett
