How to Find a Sense of Belonging in the Freelance World

Over the last few years, there’s been a massive acceleration in the trend of people leaving mainstream jobs to start their own business, from freelancing or private practices to portfolio careers. Largely in the name of freedom. But, many are also finding, they’re giving up something big along the way. A sense of community, comradery, and belonging. And, it may even lead to increasing levels of social isolation or even loneliness.

If you’ve ever worked in a corporate role or within any team, you’ll be familiar with how your relationships and professional friendships are built into that environment. Often we don’t need to deliberately seek community, because it is already all around us. Which is why maintaining professional relationships or building new ones, can be an unanticipated layer to the experience of moving into the world of freelance.

So in today’s, SPARKED Hot Take episode, that’s the discussion we’re diving into. And today we’re welcoming a new expert guide into the fold and hearing from Joy Batra.

Joy has had a fascinating portfolio career and has embraced a multi-passionate life. She graduated from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School with a JD/MBA, but instead of taking a prestigious job in the field she landed an acting contract in Bollywood instead.

Joy is founder of Quartz Consulting, a freelance consulting firm that has advised start-ups, venture capital firms, and Fortune 500 companies. She spends her days as Head of Legal at Syndicate Protocol and her free time freelancing in the arts. 

Joy is fascinated by how millions of people are using freelancing to support both their corporate and creative sides. And has turned this passion into her first book, The Freelance Mindset: Unleashing Your Side Hustles for Better Work, Play, and Life.

With this multi-passionate lens, Joy is perfectly placed to share insights on how to create community when you’re navigating the freelance world and how to cultivate a sense of belonging when it is no longer built in by default as it may have been in a ‘9-5’.

Jonathan & Joy discuss:

• What Joy calls ‘portfolios of community’
• Uncovering levels of connection and how they can help us to understand where and how to cultivate community as a freelancer
• Examining what style of community experience works best for each of us
• The pitfalls of comparing 9-5 community vs freelance community and why instead we should embrace the customizable nature of freelance community building

SPARKED HOT TAKE WITH: Joy Batra | Website | LinkedIn

Joy Batra is founder of Quartz Consulting, a freelance consulting firm that has advised start-ups, venture capital firms, and Fortune 500 companies. She previously worked at Goldman Sachs, Gunderson Dettmer, JioSaavn, and briefly as a Bollywood actress (long story). Joy spends her days as Head of Legal at Syndicate Protocol and her free time freelancing in the arts. Joy has lived or worked in India, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, the UAE, and the UK. She currently splits her time between NYC and Boston. Joy holds a JD/MBA from Harvard University.

AND HOSTED BY: Jonathan Fields

Jonathan is a dad, husband, award-winning author, multi-time founder, executive producer and host of the Good Life Project podcast, and co-host of SPARKED, too! He’s also the creator of an unusual tool that’s helped more than 650,000 people discover what kind of work makes them come alive - the Sparketype® Assessment, and author of the bestselling book, SPARKED.

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