7 Beginners Tips for Autistic Freelancers

By: Vanessa Blanchard

There’s a lot about freelancing that seems overwhelming at first, especially for autistic people who have to deal with executive dysfunction and overwhelm.  On top of that, confidence can be a huge obstacle to freelancing - especially because of autistic tendency to people-please and the socially reinforced idea of our inferiority.  But freelancing can give autistic folks tons of freedom while protecting our autonomy.  For many of us, it’s the best way to develop a career that we’re in control of.

That’s why Spectroomz has decided to release a series of premium blogs that give Spectroomz hub members freelancing tips meant to demystify the process of setting up and running a freelancing business.  Each blog will focus on breaking down a specific topic related to freelancing so that you can get organized and begin operating in a way that respects and meets your needs.

We’re able to create this series because of the support from Spectroomz members (thank you). This post, however, is open to everyone.

To start, we’ll give you 7 beginners tips that will also help introduce some of the other topics we’ll cover more in-depth in the future.

Freelancing Tips for Autistic Adults

1. Decide on the Product or Service You’ll Offer

Take inventory of your interests, skills, experiences, and needs to help you find the right career path to pursue.  Also take note of what you’ll need to succeed, obstacles you’ll face, and patterns you’ve noticed (i.e. times when you’re most productive). 

This is a practice you can revisit if you need to pep-talk yourself, touch base with your goals, or adjust your approach to something.

Use the information you generate from taking inventory to decide on the structure of your freelancing business.  For example, how many meetings can you manage a week?  What volume of work can you consistently deliver on?  What exactly are you offering clients?

You can learn more about this process by taking the course, How to Find a Job When You’re Autistic, in the Spectroomz hub.

2. Set Yourself Up for Success

Freelancing is overwhelming because you’re throwing yourself headfirst into running a whole business.  If you take some time to research freelancing in general, and to research your freelancing in industry, then you’ll be more confident starting out.

There’s also a lot of set up involved in freelancing: 

• You have to gather/create the relevant paperwork (contracts, invoices, taxes, setting up an llc, etc)

• You have to gather your work experience (portfolio, proposals, resume, cover letter templates, etc)

• You have to define your prices, policies, and product/services

• You have to know how to get clients in your industry

We’ll discuss all of this more in our article, “6 Steps to Getting Started as an Autistic Freelancer.” Join as a Spectroomz Hub member to get access.

But for now, start looking into people who are already freelancing in your field.  See if you can find professional websites and analyze how they’re set up.  If you feel comfortable, reach out to a couple of people and ask for informational interviews.  (bonus tip: here’s an article on how to ace the interview as well)

You’ll be able to answer important questions about everything mentioned above with these interviews, so it’s worth being brave and reaching out.  Remember, you can always offer to send a list of questions for them to answer if that’s more comfortable than in-person interviews.

3. Collect Samples of Your Work

Portfolios are a major benefit for autistic people when it comes to freelancing.  They allow you to show your work versus having to mindread your way through resumes and interviews.  The portfolio process demands far less masking.

Collect examples of your best work.  Hobbies count, especially towards the beginning. Use the work you gather to tell a story about you.  This can be done in many ways:

• Create a timeline of growth in your specific skillset

• Demonstrate that you learn proactively and are passionate about your work

• Demonstrate that you’ve got a deep understanding of a specific topic

• Showcase a project that you participated in from start to finish to document how your skills work in practice

Bonus freelancing tip: Putting together a portfolio is a great way to find your first clients.  You can offer reduced rates and request help building your portfolio to encourage people to give you those initial projects.  People like to feel like they’re helping.  Build requests for testimonials and to use certain works into your contract and/or customer service routine.  You can do some of the first jobs as volunteer work, but don’t give too much of your time away for free.

We’ll discuss more strategies for building a portfolio in our article, “How to Build a Portfolio When You’re Autistic”. Join as a Spectroomz Hub member to get access to this article once it’s out.

Spectroomz Can Help!

Writers ✍️!  Spectroomz is putting out a call for submissions for guest posts on our blog.  We believe that this can provide some practice for freelancing writers who are developing their portfolios.  Future posts in this series will include an option to submit your ideas for articles. 

4. Prepare Yourself to Find Clients

Like we mentioned above, different industries will have different ways of finding clients.  For example, book publishers require query letters, while a lot of smaller publications put out calls for submissions (like we did in the last paragraph).  So, you’ll need to learn how to sell your services.  Of course, there are more general tips for freelancers that we can give you: learn about cold emails and how to find freelancing websites for job opportunities.

However, there are also some specific autistic-friendly freelancing tips that feel important to impart:

• Set up contracts that reinforce good boundaries around your services, rates, communication requirements and any other policies you need.  This protects your autonomy and your ability to maintain sustainable work.  It also protects you from some of the sneakier social dynamics that can lead to disappointing experiences.  Plus, it takes a lot of the burden off of you to enforce your boundaries, which can be hard for autistic folks.  You can set this up to reflect very specific sets of instructions for each contract, so that you have all expectations in writing for you to reference.

• Define your ideal client and use that description to set your boundaries and policies.  This is a similar tactic to defining your ideal customer while you decide on branding.  For autistic people, this can help you navigate meeting new people by having determined ahead of time key characteristics that you’re looking for.  Finding clients is about screening people for collaboration compatibility.  Things will be less ambiguous in the moment for you with this step.

• Be prepared to find “bad” clients and adjust your boundaries/policies around what you learn from them.  The same advice applies to being unable to deliver your services properly.  Learn from the mistakes rather than beating yourself up.  Life happens and is messy, it’s okay.

These tips will specifically help autistic freelancers because it establishes you as The Boss and head of your company.  Autistic people face a lot of social discrimination and are often shoved to the bottom of any hierarchy that is established.  Because of social biases, autistic freelancers are at a greater risk for people to try to chip away at our boundaries and policies.  We also tend to internalize other people’s discrimination against us.  

We’ll discuss more ways to find clients in our article, “Ways for Autistic Freelancers to Find Their First Clients.” Join as a Spectroomz Hub member to get access to this article once it’s out.

5. Cultivate Confidence in Yourself

Confidence is going to be a big obstacle for autistic freelancers.  There are a number of social obstacles that autistic people face and we can’t always control that.  The emphasis in this article on setting boundaries is a foundational way you’ll start building confidence in your freelancing career.

But there are other things you can do to build a sense of confidence.  So here are a few tips that you can use to get started:

• Expect mistakes and use them to evolve your business plan.

• Breakdown big tasks and find ways to make things easier and more fun.

• Keep trying even if you feel like a fraud (imposter syndrome is a rough ride, but it’s also rarely accurate)

• Learn to meet your needs rather than judge them (ex: Build skills around executive dysfunction and/or adjust your business model if you have a tendency to procrastinate or difficulty meeting deadlines)

Confidence is like a garden.  It doesn’t grow all at once, and sometimes it doesn’t thrive for strange, elusive reasons. However, cultivation is an ongoing process that learns from the outcomes and always plants the next crop.  Put more directly, building confidence isn’t a straight line type of process.  There are always setbacks, but progress still happens.

We’ll discuss more tactics and practices for gaining confidence in your career in our article, “How to Build Confidence as an Autistic Freelancer.”Join as a Spectroomz Hub member to get access to this article. 

6. Continue Developing Your Skills

Make sure to invest in further training/development for your career.  You can take classes, get certifications, find a mentor, and many other options.  One benefit of investing in career development is that you’re very justified in increasing your rates.  You can also broaden the types of clients you attract.  You might even find that people start reaching out to offer you work instead of you finding them.

You can build the cost of these trainings into your contract and rates.  For example, ensure that your rates are high enough for you to develop skills that interest you.  However, consider also adding to your contract that the client will pay for training materials specific to your work for them.  We strongly advise against doing client-specific training on your personal time.

Spectoomz Can Help!

If you’re excited to get started, check out the Spectroomz Hub.  There are courses on SEO, writing, marketing, and more!  Premium members have full access to all of our courses and premium content (including future articles from this series)!

7. Update Your Portfolio and Resume Often

One of the hardest, most overwhelming parts of freelancing can be networking and finding clients.  This process is so much easier if you keep your portfolios and resumes up to date.  Making small updates as you complete a course/project/other accomplishment means you’ll be half done when it’s time to start reaching out to new folks.  Because honestly, burnout is probably going to play a factor in your job search.  Transitions are hard and many of us have work histories full of stress and trauma.

There are other ways that you can streamline your freelancing functions, specifically to accommodate the overwhelm and executive dysfunction common to autistic and ADHD freelancers.  

We’ll discuss this topic more in our article, “Freelancing Executive Dysfunction Hacks for Autism and ADHD” Join as a Spectroomz Hub member to get access to this article. 

As a Freelancer, You are in Charge

This is your business and you’re The Boss.  That might be an intimidating hat to wear (hello again, imposter syndrome!) but freelancing is often one of the best ways for autistic folks to build stable, sustainable careers. It eliminates most of the hierarchy and politics, and it allows you to build your accommodations into your business model 

A quick note from the writer: As I give you these tips on freelancing, I have to admit that I wish there were more supports or ways to collaborate/share the burden of operating a whole business like this. It seems an unfair burden to ask us to do this given the types of disabilities common to autism (i.e. executive dysfunction and ADHD).  Until then, I really hope that this series of articles can empower you on your journey.  Good luck! 🖤

About the writer

I’m a writer, artist, and advocate who loves living in Maine among the trees and oceanside villages. I’m also autistic, ADHD, and PTSD. My education, both academic and personal, has centered around mental health and neurodevelopmental disabilities, as well as discrimination and the socioeconomic consequences of living disabled in America.. You can find me on Twitter @ladysnessa.