Workfree Connect: With Jonnie Cartmill

It’s the first month of 2024, and who better to connect with than co-founder Jonnie Cartmill to get a grasp of how he got involved with Workfree, his learnings so far and the 2024 aces that are up his sleeve. 

 What did your career look like before the start of Workfree?

For the last 15 years I have been working in software companies, fast growing scale ups -  my focus has been on sales and revenue based roles as an individual contributor, as well as leading teams. Over that 15 year period, I've hired thousands of people. Recruitment has been a key part of my day to day and it's one of the reasons that inspired me to start a company like Workfree.

With that in mind, how did your previous experience lead you to where you are now?

The initial idea for Workfree came from Amy, my wonderful partner in life and in crime. As a freelancing mum, Amy came up against a lot of challenges and determined that there was a better way for freelancers to work. She started building out the first version of Workfree back in 2021. 

Meanwhile, I was thinking about the company that I was working in at the time. We were hiring a lot and I thought there must be a better way for the business to grow, and to scale - maybe it’s a combination of full-time employees and freelancers.. Maybe the key was to have more agility, to have quicker speed to hire, to have less risk in terms of cost for the company, but then also for the talent. It felt like there was a more fluid way of working. And I'd seen that shift in culture, especially the last four or five years, accelerated by COVID. I saw a lot of people, even in sales based roles, that were interested in getting to have more freedom and flexibility in the work that they were doing - some even requested to freelance, which isn't traditionally what salespeople do, we don’t tend to associate sales in the tech space and freelancing together, more so marketing and tech development.

Whenever we decided to build the idea of Workfree, we wanted to have two sides. We wanted to have an app and a platform that would support the growth of freelancers to tackle some of the challenges that Amy had identified as a freelancer over a five year period. And we wanted to build a software that would support companies that wanted to book flexible teams of freelancers alongside their full-time employees.

I feel like another component of Workfree is that it encourages this work/life balance. It's working AND having a sense of freedom. How has the flexibility of freelancing become integral to your optimising  work/life?

I had the opportunity to travel a lot with the companies I used to work for. We did it a lot as a family and really enjoyed it. When you get to move around, you're more motivated. I always wanted to build a business that would have flexibility at the heart of it. That's one of the key things that Workfree stands for, it’s really to give freedom back to the way that people work.There’s been a  shift and change in culture, where we’re moving past the old principles of 9 to 5. We want to help companies get a sense of that, and get freelancers at the fore!

For me specifically, I think it's a great thing for parents. As a new parent in the last 5-10 years, to be able to spend more time with our kids, less time commuting etc, was a game changer.I can do the pick up, spend quality time and get back to it afterwards.  And it’s a great thing for people in general - imagine being able to be rewarded based on the output of your work rather than the amount of time spent in an office. I really believe in the value of outcome-based work versus time.

Some of the places that I enjoy working the most are the gym, or down at the beach -  places where you can get inspired and have a pause. I get some of my most creative thoughts when I’m running, or doing some weights. By stepping away from the strategy brainstorms like we’re doing now,  to think on my feet for a bit enables me to then sit back down and hash things out with my team.

I’m sure the last year has provided you guys with even more info on how companies are envisaging the future of their  workforce.. what have you learned?

A stand out learning has to be the speed at which freelancing is accelerating. Currently, globally, around about 45 to 50% of the global workforce is made up of freelancers or contractors. Some  full-time, some  part-time in terms of side gigs or side contracting. But it's a massive, massive component of the global workforce. It's not going to slow down.

CAGR, which is compound annual growth rate on the freelancing space, is set at about 15 or 16%, which means that if you fast forward to 2030, there could easily be over one and a half billion freelancers globally.

What that means is that legislation is changing a lot. The way the companies are creating experiences for their staff needs to shift.  The tools and the methodologies and the ways that they actually go about doing that,  they also need to change. That’s where we come in.

I think the best businesses are  thinking about or adopting freelancing strategies into their overall workforce strategy, no question about it. They are considering freelancers as an excellent way to cover skills gaps for example. Perhaps they lack a specific skill  in creative direction for the automotive industry. Knowing  they can  find talent that can fill that gap for a period of time as opposed to having to go off and source, onboard, hire and pay a full-time employee - which can take a lot longer and cost a lot more money.

We’ve seen  that most of the companies we  work with, in the global kind of agency networks and tech companies, around about 20% or 30% of their full time headcount are reflected in freelancers today.

From a freelance perspective then, what are the common pain points that they look to Workfree and think you're going to help us solve that?

First and foremost, freelancers want to find great work. They want to work with great companies.

Some freelancers have the great problem of having too much work. In those cases, they want to have a way of housing their trusted talent so that they can distribute work amongst them and deal with bigger projects - we're going to be helping them do that. They'll be able to build their own customised talent pools that they can collaborate with their network on.

Most freelancers want exposure. We are going to support with being more visible in the market so that they can get a continuous lead flow of work. We want to make it easy for freelancers to get booked and for companies to book great talent.

On the payment side of things, many freelancers don't get paid on time,  it's just it's not fair. We want to solve this. Often larger companies don't have the processes in place to be able to make payments Immediately or they forget about it.Full-time employees don't get paid late, freelancers shouldn't get paid late, so we're trying to create some simplicity around that as well.

What are you most excited about for the new year?

The Workfree community. 

Workfree is built, used and owned by the community, meaning that we are differentiating ourselves to the market in the sense that our users, our freelancers, actually own equitable stakes in our business. 

We want our freelancers to engage and benefit from the social interactions, to knowledge transfer, to be inspired and then to have perks and benefits that can help with their day-to-day life. We’re aiming for our app to be the freelance assistant you have to have. The go-to, for kickstarting or growing your freelance career. 

It’s a bit like shopify, build your shop window and our community will help with the rest. Everything from legal registration, contracts - these things that you need with your clients, NDAs; to health insurance, discounted access to remote working spaces, educational courses, that’s  what we're going to push for in the new year. 

And personally? I’m excited to win a fitness competition, do an ultramarathon, and complete an Ironman.