“At the end of our first year, we had developed so much that we were sitting in a restaurant in London having lunch with Bob Geldof”

In Fitzgerald Power’s interview series, we’re speaking to people, with different perspectives, who feel they can offer more to the workplace – from the water cooler all the way up to C-Suite.

Tipperary-born, Kilkenny-based Úna Herlihy began her career in marketing straight out of college. “I studied languages in UCD, and at the time teaching was the obvious choice,” she says. “But I wasn’t one for the obvious choice.  I didn’t have the patience to teach, so I went off and did a course in advertising, and there I found something that really excited me. Working in advertising was a gift for someone like me. I got my first job working in an ad agency. This was back in 1992, and we only had one typewriter between the five of us. To think how times have changed!” During that time, Herlihy cut her teeth on internationally known clients like Coca-Cola and Guinness. “It was an amazing time,” she says.

“But then in 2005, when everything was booming, I had amassed so much experience and I wanted to do my own thing.  I wanted more freedom and flexibility to balance work with my personal life which at that point, included two small children.  So I jumped two feet first into freelancing.  Back then there was no Indie List so I was on my own. Completely! And that’s when I started to really learn a lot about myself and about starting a business” She started a consultancy agency, where she connected clients who were looking to procure agency services with the right people. “My motto always was that all you have is your reputation and I knew I had to really dig deep to build that up.” As the years rolled on, and the economy waned, the work got tougher. “But I worked really hard and refused to give up. Because of that, and a few principles I held dear, I got through it. And I knew if I could survive an economic crash as a freelancer, I could survive anything.”

In July 2020, she co-founded and launched The Indie List, a marketplace for freelancers in marketing, communications and digital to find work, network and feel part of a like-minded community. “It all happened because of the pandemic,” she says. “Every single piece of work in my pipeline was either cancelled or permanently postponed, but instead of giving in to panic and catastrophising, there was a part of me that was completely exhilarated. I was a spectator to this mass disruption, soaking it all up and I was fascinated to see what innovation and creativity would emerge.  As Leonard Cohen famously sang: There is a crack in everything / That’s where the light gets in. On the May Bank Holiday Weekend, from the hammock she’d just recently bought, Herlihy posted to LinkedIn, saying she was putting together a list of people who were available for work and clients who were looking for talent. “And, I didn’t think anything more of it. I put my phone down and went back to my hammock,” she says. “But it took off like a rocket. By July 4th, we launched with 55 people, on a poorly formatted Excel spreadsheet. We now have 1500 people signed up that span the full range of marketing and creative specialists and thankfully we are now working with a brilliant range of clients from SMEs, large corporates and PLCs as well as start-ups, agencies, State bodies and charities. I knew we were onto something when, by the end of our first year, we had developed so much that we were sitting in a restaurant in London having lunch with Bob Geldof. He is the ultimate indie maverick, and when we contacted him to say we were supporting independent creatives to help them in their careers, he was all about it. It was absolutely amazing.”

“There are loads of advantages to hiring a freelancer over someone full-time,” Herlihy insists. “The first thing is that freelancers are perfect for very specific, time-bound, short-term or specialised projects where you need a little bit of flexibility and control. The big advantages are cost-efficiency, flexibility and agility, which are absolutely necessary in today’s fast-moving business landscape. When so many companies have hiring freezes, there’s still a huge amount of work that needs to get done at certain times of the year, and putting all of that burden on a full-time team can result in a lot of burnout and stress as well as diminished performance. Innovation is also a huge advantage because freelancers bring in specialised skills and other industry knowledge, which, when you’re in one particular kind of category or industry or company, you lack that perspective from the outside world.”

The term “fractional role,” has been thrown around a lot in the hiring world of late. What does that entail? “This concept of fractional C-suite hires is really big in the US – and is starting to gain traction here. So essentially what that is, is hiring a very senior person for a fraction of their time and therefore a fraction of the cost. So in the Indie List, we have a subsection, which is a very elite group of about sixty or seventy C-suite marketers across different kinds of areas of specialism. And they’re not necessarily looking for a full-time job. They’ve already done what they call “the nine-to-nine.” They’ve had the big office and great title, but the further up the food chain they’ve gone, the further away they were from the thing they loved. So they have stepped back from that corporate world to follow their own path. And, what they are looking for now is the opportunity to work on a fractional basis with a couple of smaller clients. It’s this idea of a portfolio career. They might work a couple of days with one business, and a couple of days with another, and then maybe have a day off to go and do some professional development. Some are going back to college, some are spending time with family, some are, going surfing on a Wednesday afternoon.”

As Q4 comes to a close, all C-Suiters worth their salt are thinking about 2025. What are the trends you see in freelance work for next year, particularly in the marketing, creative and digital sectors? “Freelance work in marketing, creative, and digital sectors is rapidly evolving,” Herlihy says. “Driven by massive changes in client needs and technological advancements. What this means is that businesses are increasingly looking for specialists rather than generalists, across niche areas such as social media, content strategy, UX/UI design, lead generation, content production, editing and AI.

“We’ve also noticed that generative AI is changing the landscape of creative and digital services. Freelancers who are skilled in AI (e.g., use cases, application of tools, project management, content generation) will continue to be in high demand. As marketing strategies become more integrated across platforms, freelancers who can manage multi-channel campaigns—combining social media, paid advertising, email marketing, and SEO—are highly sought after. Expertise in platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn, coupled with analytical skills, is also increasingly valuable. If you can throw in content creation like using platforms like Canva, you will have more work than you can take on! These hybrid skills are becoming more important as business owners are looking for the human version of a Swiss Army knife; freelancers who can blend creative, analytical, and technical expertise.

“Finally, another trend we are seeing play out on social media is a focus on personal branding for freelancers.  As competition increases, freelancers are paying more attention to their own content marketing (blogs, social media, podcasts) and leveraging client testimonials to help them stand out in the crowded marketplace. When people sign up to the Indie List and we begin to vet them, we might come across a graphic designer who has no website… only for them to insist that “people know them,” and they “don’t need one”. That’s not really how things work anymore. You have to put yourself out there, and then the work will come. It always does.”

For more information on Úna, or The Indie List, check out her LinkedIn here.