Freelance career. First impression.
I was freelancing for about a year and a half by now. Most of the time it was the side-hustle apart from my main job. But recently, a couple of months ago, I decided to quit my job and switch to freelance with the intent to build my own business eventually. So today, I’d like to share with you my impressions and my experience so far.
How and why…
From first sight, it may not seem, like I had a solid reason to do it. I had a great job with a flexible schedule and a good salary. I could easily keep growing and pushing my career forward. But in this routine, at a certain point, it started to feel a bit off. I was facing this kind of feeling before, but I was always able to fix things up with vacation or traveling somewhere. Another thing, that I did was playing around with a bunch of pet-projects, that I was thinking of building at a time. While trying to shake things up, I even picked up a side hustle, which has evolved into a great long-term partnership. This was one of the defining moments for me. I was always a reliable employee and I had no problem with taking ownership of my work. But when you work directly with a client — it gives you this feeling of responsibility on a whole new level. I’m still not sure why, but it feels very different from when you’re working in a company. And it was quite satisfying.
But even with all this, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t in the right place in my life. It seemed like I’m holding back on being the best version of myself. After all, I came to understanding, that I was always passionate about entrepreneurship. I always had this urge to create something. Something that is completely mine and nobody else’s. Having a business always appealed to me and seemed like something cool. In other words — I wanted to give something to this world, something I’ll be remembered for, and something that would be associated with me. And in my wildest fantasies — I was always an entrepreneur.
So I came to understanding, that there was nothing wrong with my job or my life. I just reached a level, where I couldn’t be satisfied with having a regular job anymore. I was ready and it was time to start working for myself. That’s how it all got started.
Pros and cons.
Firstly, your freedom is on a whole new level. You pick up a job if you want to, you choose your clients, and if you need a rest in between jobs — it’s not a problem. This is clearly a benefit, but it also can work against you if your self-discipline gets loose. You can also switch workspaces whenever you like. I worked at coffee shops or from home, so if your environment gets boring — there’s no problem with changing it.
Another great perk is the experience boost, that you’ll get. Especially in the first stages, when you have to take on anything, you can handle, to earn yourself some reputation. You’ll have to be the “one-man army”. So your skillset will constantly expand, and you’re going to pick up some expertise from a bunch of related areas (For example, as a software developer, you’ll need a bit of design skills and some Dev ops experience). Not to mention, that you’ll need to succeed in management and sales to win and deliver products.
Although, if you’re getting into a freelance — there’s a lot of challenges you should know about. The first thing to mention here will be a huge competition. In this game of freelance — the skills are meaningless (Until you win a job, of course). Reputation is everything and you’ll have to struggle until you build it. And newsflash — there’re many like you 🙂. This gets easier once you’ve built a portfolio and a trail of happy clients. But you still have to boost your sales skills and your ability to pitch yourself to clients.
Another huge factor is that as a freelance is mostly a remote work business — You’ll have to compete with people from all over the world. And different countries have different economics. Some people a perfectly comfortable working for 3–5$/hour. So, you’ll have to put a huge effort to compete with underbidding and ensure clients that you can do the best job. It’s worth noticing that some clients are using this situation to their advantage. But if you’re good — you shouldn’t worry about that too much. Once you’ve built up some reputation — good clients will be around.
And probably the most challenging thing is self-discipline. As I said, you as a freelancer, won’t have a strict schedule. And while it’s a great perk, it may be your downfall if overused. So you have to set yourself straight if you want to succeed.
The way to succeed.
While it was challenging at times to pick up new clients, I never had a problem with keeping them happy. I believe that the key to it is the mindset. You need to over-deliver. Which isn’t that hard to do when you’re doing the thing you love. Once I get a project — I’m treating it as if it was mine. If I see a possible improvement or some hidden obstacles — I don’t hesitate to talk this through or share my vision or suggest some of my ideas/improvements. This creates happy clients. It’s a level of engagement that matters. That’s a good way to get clients to partner up with you. Even if there is someone more qualified than you are — At the end of the day, people choose engagement and dedication.
How to achieve that? Well, as I said, you have to love what you do. That’s the most important part. Another thing is you have to choose your clients and your product. Of course, being picky isn’t something you can afford at the very beginning of a freelance career. But ideally, once you earn a name for yourself — you should only pick up the products, that you would be passionate about. You should ask yourself a question “would I be willing to do it for free?”. To be honest, these types of products don’t come around as often, as you would like. But that’s what you should aim for.
What’s next?
Well, next I’m going to build a business. I want to create a team of like-minded people. A team, that is known for a list of innovative and impactful products. And the team that would be your first pick if you want to build a meaningful product that changes the world. There’s still a long way to reach that goal. I have a lot of things to figure out and a big portion of business-related knowledge that I’ll need to grasp. But I figured that as long as I have a vision and I’m capable of delivering great results — I will get there eventually. It’s just important to be stubborn and constantly keep growing no matter what.
