Business
I’m in favour of people starting their own business,
but I also recognise it’s not for everyone. I’ve become
tired of the anti-job rhetoric on social media not
giving a balanced view.
What You Need to Know about
Freelancing
Jodie Cook
Should you quit your job to go freelance?
Maybe, but think it through. I’ve been on both
sides and seen people go freelance and it work
out amazingly and it not work out for others.
I recently read Choose Yourself by James
Altucher. In the book he directly addresses
those in employment, telling them how easily
they could replace their salary by going
freelance. He said a salary was the minimum
someone could buy your time for and
employers knew this, so paid the lowest they
could get away with.
The anti-job rhetoric over social media seems
stronger than ever, with constant memes
stating: “You can do better! Take back control,
quit your job!”. There are others, about building
other people’s dreams when you could build
your own, 9-5s being a form of modern slave
labour, and so on.
Who’s behind these messages? Some are
by self-employed people who have been
successful and want to tell others. There’s
a genuine reason there, albeit a very self-
congratulatory one. But, more often, it’s
someone selling a course on how to access an
amazing lifestyle based on working freelance.
A course that’s worth $15,000, available for
the one-time-only price of $997. Or they are
posts written by companies selling products
for freelancers. It’s in their best interests that
more of them exist.
Don’t go ahead
without doing your
research
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Whatever you decide, it must be a decision
that’s right for you, and definitely not made
on a whim from your last conversation or
after seeing a meme on Instagram. Here are
the important considerations to help your
decision:
How do I want to spend my time
at work?
What are you really good at doing and is this
what you are leaving your job to do? If you’re
a journalist leaving to become a freelance
copywriter, you might love the writing itself and
are the best person in your company at it. As
a freelancer, it’s not enough to be good at the
work; you need to be good at finding it. That
means the 100% that was spent on writing
might now be 75%, the rest of your time is spent
winning the work, self-promoting, networking,
providing case studies, meetings, chasing
payments and … yes… selling. How much of
your time do you want to spend finding ways
to market yourself and your services?
A good friend called Lee now runs his own
office fit-out and interior design company.
Previously, he was working as a sales person
for a firm doing something similar, but Lee’s
background was furniture making, he had a
passion for every aspect of the work – from
the networking to the sale right through to
the design of a workspace. Just selling wasn’t
enough and the move from employment to
self-employment suited him perfectly. He’s
risk-averse, so he talked through the best and
worse-case scenario and knew what he was
getting himself into. It paid off.
What is success?
If going self-employed goes well, what do your
life and business look like? What does your
day-to-day involve? How much do you work?
What kind of clients are you working with, how
much are you invoicing each month? What
happens next?
When I started hiring I had more than a full-time
job’s worth of freelance work, I loved working
with my clients, but it was hard switching
between being creative and transactional, so
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