Freelance is the Future

I have been advocating the freelance lifestyle on this blog for some time. I am genuinely happy with my work as a freelancer and I think a lot of other people would be happy as freelancers. I also advocate freelancing in person and if we meet and talk you'll find out! I wanted to share a few stories about friends who have recently made the transition to freelancing and what their experience has been like. (All names changed to protect the innocent).

Steve

I met Steve in my Thai class in Bangkok. Steve is a web developer and had been working for a web agency in Bangkok for a couple of years. A couple of months ago Steve messaged me. He had just been told he was probably going to be made redundant because the company was bankrupt. On top of that his girlfriend had recently become pregnant so he was understandably nervous! He knew I was a freelancer and wanted to talk to me about what it was like.

We met up for a beer and discussed the freelancing lifestyle, how to get clients and what rates to charge. He was a bit worried about how long it would take for him to ramp up his business as babies are not inclined to wait while their fathers get their finances in order!

I recently met up with Steve again and was delighted to hear that he was happier than he'd ever been at work. In his own words he'll "never go back". Steve had teamed up with his colleague and formed a partnership. They got in touch with all the contacts they had made and found a few clients who wanted to work with them. Steve is now working half the hours that he used to and making the same money. He is also at home to help his girlfriend and he can't wait to spend lots of time with his baby when it arrives.

Paula

Paula and I have been friends since high school. Paula is a graphic designer by day and an artist by night. She worked for years in very high pressure work environments and was always super stressed. Last year she quit her job and decided to start working freelance.  She wanted to earn enough by freelancing 50% of the week that she could afford to spend the other 50% focusing on her art.

I met up with Paula last weekend and she looked happier than I had seen her in a long time. She had used the contacts she made during her salaried career to pick up 2 big businesses as regular clients. These 2 clients pay her well enough that she can work half her time and create art the rest of the time. She is renting a studio where she goes on days that her clients don't have work for her. She seems extremely happy and I am glad to see my friend looking relaxed and healthy.

What's Your Point?

Freelancing is awesome!

In seriousness, I think this is demonstrative of the world we live in now. The opportunities for freelancing are many and the flexibility enables people to have more control over their lives. The 2 examples here were enabled by contacts made during a salaried career, and that is definitely an advantage. That said, contacts of any kind are beneficial. My main takeaway is to focus on talking to people and making more contacts. You never know where your next opportunity may come from.

If you would like to know more about getting started freelancing get in touch.

Work for Free!

When starting out as a freelancer it is difficult to decide on what rate to charge. Very often you will not have references to prove your bona fides, repeat clients to rely on or an established name. In that case the only way to compete is on price. You can work for free, but should you?

The video below has been doing the rounds for a while and is intended to dissuade people from doing "spec work". In case you aren't familiar with the term, spec is short for speculative. A business may ask someone to do work for free on the understanding that this is a "foot in the door" and could result in more work in future or gain you exposure.

Spec work generally crops up in creative fields, although I have been asked for spec work and no one has ever described me as a creative! Watch the video and we'll talk more afterwards.

This topic came to me as a result of my new favourite podcast, Hello Internet. As an aside, if you have never heard of it I recommend listening, the two guys on there discuss some really interesting topics. On the most recent episode they had a fascinating discussion about this video and spec work in general. You can listen to it starting at 1:12 on episode 61.

Listening to their discussion helped clarify some thoughts that I have had on the subject. I wrote a post at the start of this blog about how to compete with low cost countries. In that post I said that you should "demonstrate your quality and the right clients at the right rates will come." I still believe that and my career is proving it as my rates continue to climb. However, while I never had to work for free at the start of my career I did work for much, much lower rates than I do now or ever had since my paper round when I was 12 years old. You can see how my hourly rate changed during 2015 in this chart:

When you are starting out as a freelancer you will need to think tactically. You need to honestly and critically assess your skills; what gives you a competitive advantage over others in your field? As a fledgling writer you might come up with the following list:

• Experience in the legal industry
• Internship with a magazine
• Punctual & reliable
• Poem published on a well known website

Those are all great but one thing that will almost certainly be missing from this list is an established brand name or reputation. If you do have one of those then start celebrating; the world is your mollusc and you can feel free to charge whatever you like. If not, then you might add to the list:

• Will work for free

I don't want to sound very cynical but I don't believe the people who made that video did it out of a sense of civic duty. I think they are established professionals who do not want young upstarts to work for free and drive down the value in the market.

I'm not saying that you should do it. I have friends who have done it and had nothing come of it. I also know people who have gained a benefit. If nothing else you should carefully consider it but be aware that it is a gamble. It's up to you whether you choose to roll the dice.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss this more.

Freelance - I Love You!

Okay before I will start here, just to let you know I am not a great writer. Writing is my weakest skill. However I will challenge myself here and I will tell you my story.

Let Me Introduce Myself

My name is Agnieszka, but I prefer Agi! I'm the quieter part of no9to5! Brown hair, 164cm (very small person), but very fast! My passion is running. I think I am like THE FLASH and run everywhere, every day... but not as fast as FLASH! I could talk and talk about running, but maybe next time I will share more.

What else I can say about myself? I love spending time outdoors. I am a very active girl who likes to challenge herself and learn new things whenever possible.

Since I can remember I travelled from my childhood. My parents took me and my brother every year somewhere to show us a bit of the world. Of course mainly in Poland but after communism, we started to travel abroad.

I always love to discover new parts of the world, I like to meet new people and explore more and more. I like new things, new places and new food.

UK Bound

After my study I decided to leave Poland and I moved to UK without any English (yikes!). I actually learnt some sentences: “Good Morning. My name is Agi. I am looking for a job. Any job”... “Pardon”... “Please could you repeat” ha ha ha.

So when I arrived I got a job at Mars and over there I started to grow up. I developed my job skills. It was a perfect place to work. I learnt a lot there. But……

Living in the UK was pretty sweet. Great job, great salary and Great Boyfriend. Living there I discovered a new world. I have done a lot of new things. I got my motor bike driving licence, I went on my first big backpacking trip, my first half marathon and more and more……. I like it, I liked my life in England.

Living in the UK was awesome, but…..I felt not 100% sure if this is what I want.

I started feeling like I don’t want to spend my whole live in the office from 9-5 in one big company. That's not the kind of person I wanted to be. I want to be different and I want something…yes but what do I want?

I know…..I want a new job, I want a new life, and I want to experience something new.

How About Thailand?

My Great Boyfriend, said to me why don’t we move to Thailand and start to live there.

Hmmm new country, new culture, new continent why not?

Wait, but it's hot there every day, what I am going to do with my running? Where will I run there? Where will I find job there? What kind of job? AAAAAAAAAAAA……….and more and more questions in my head.

One life, so let’s do it. And there my freelance trip is starting……

Freelance trip……Freelance WHAT? WHERE? HOW?

Hello Freelance, wait what is freelance?  Where to start? How to start?

My Great Boyfriend had a few friends who were already living in Thailand and some of them were already freelancers.

The first thing I did like any normal human - I checked on internet what is freelance. I also read a book by Tim Ferris - The 4 Hour Workweek, I also followed a few blogs and got more knowledge.

Let's Freelance

First thing I did, I created my profile on Odesk (now Upwork). I reviewed other people's profiles, what did they say about themselves and of course check out the profile style.

All of them looked the same. People copy and paste their CV’s. I tried to make mine different, I wanted to be more COOL and stand out from the other 100,000,000 people. I have also completed on Odesk (Upwork) recommended tests like: English test, Management skills test etc.

And then I started hunting for some jobs. But what job, what do I want to do? What can I do? What skills do I have? What job background do I have? Can I freelance?

Of course I can freelance, let’s keep myself motivated and be positive.

So I reviewed my skills, my work history and myself. I decided I can apply for Virtual Assistant jobs, I can help people to be more organised, I can help with Social Media, I can create images etc. All of these things came to my head.

And nowadays after 1 year freelance I became super Virtual Assistant, I became designer and guru of Social Media! After 1 year I have learnt lots about Photoshop, social media and many other things.

I have created my own website http://virtualagi.com/

And after all this experience with freelance I could still travel around Asia.

I and my Great Boyfriend decided to share this story and this is why we decided to create no9to5 to help people to start with Freelance.

If you have any question please contact us: http://no9to5.co/contact/