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After 3 Years of Freelancing, Here is What I’ve Learned
By Sandy
Last month officially marked three years as a full-time freelancer.
Luckily, I have no intention of looking back.
Over the last few years, my life has changed dramatically in ways that I wished for, but didn’t actually believe was possible.
For one, I’m able to home-school my son. This was huge for me because it is something I’ve wanted to do since he was just a little toddler. As a single mom with two jobs, I wasn’t sure that would ever be a possibility.
Then, there’s the intoxicating draw of having control over my own day, my own time, and my own income.
But it’s the little things too.
I’m able to happily bypass those little irritants that I otherwise took as an acceptable part of my day…
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The morning rush, the traffic, the lack of fresh air all day, having to stress over when to schedule simple appointments and daily life, picking up a tired toddler from a long day at daycare… the list goes on.
Of course, it hasn’t all been delightful. Crafting a life that is vastly different than most people around you isn’t easy. Besides being questioned at every turn, there’s also feelings of ostracization, questioning of my own sanity and self-worth, and of course loads and loads of financial stress (especially in the beginning).
Throughout the years, I’ve learned a lot.
Because I am frequently asked a lot of questions about this lifestyle and how I manage “without a job,” I wanted to round up the top 5 lessons I’ve learned from 3 years of freelancing.
My hope is that this will help anyone who might be interested in taking the leap and going rogue in the working world.
Contract work has always been a thing. The term “freelancing” itself originates from the early 19th century. However, the generations immediately preceding me didn’t do much freelancing… at least not as a permanent solution for living.
No, they were the generations that received steady paychecks and promises of retirement.
Virtually, their entire lives were taken care of in exchange for 40 hours each week for 20-30 years.
That’s not the case any longer.
Honestly, I’m kind of glad it isn’t. There’s something about relying on a major company to supply everything needed in my life for the rest of time that just doesn’t sit well with me.
Regardless, the workscape has, and continues to, drastically change.
Of course, technology helps. It also doesn’t hurt that our economy took a huge nose dive and forced a lot of people to get creative with their income source…
But there’s more to it.
There’s been a change in the way we perceive work and what we should be doing with our time for those 40 hours each week, 30 years of our lives.
Whatever it is, freelancing is growing. Many workers now are not permanently employed.
A study done by Upwork and Freelancers Union recently found that about 50% of millennials are now freelancing, and freelancers are expected to become the majority of the U.S. workforce in just a decade.
That’s a major shift from decades past. Are you ready for it?
“But… how do you get your health insurance?”
This is the first question I’m asked just about every time I tell someone I’m a freelancer. I’ll answer this question in a minute, but first…
Can we not agree as a society that it’s very troubling that the cost of surviving has increased so much that we can’t possibly imagine a. Paying for the care we need ourselves, or b. That the insurance needed for such costs is so ridiculously expensive that only major companies can comfortably offer this as a package to employees?
This concerns me. Because how can we really design our own lives when something so fundamental holds so many of us hostage to a company?
Either way…
Yes, it’s possible to have insurance as a freelancer. Basic plans really aren’t that much, but I’ll admit, the good ones are completely out of my price range. So, yes, it’s possible. And yes, it’s still of concern and I hope we’re able to figure this out, especially as the number of freelancers continues to grow.
And often, they criticize and villainize what they fear.
As an online freelancer, that often means I’m faced with criticism and misunderstanding from people who are close to me “in real life.”
Sometimes, it’s simple comments: “What do you do all day? Don’t you get bored without a job? I could never not work, I’d be bored!”
Dude. I work. I just don’t work for someone else exclusively.
If you’re currently freelancing, you know that working for yourself often means working more hours and having much more responsibility than when you had a traditional job.
Whether you get clients, do the client work, invoice, get paid, get business bills paid, etc… it’s all on you. The paycheck doesn’t just show up in the bank account on Friday, you have to work for it.
The other side of that coin is the question, “how do you stay motivated? I’d be afraid I’d just waste the entire day without actually doing anything.”
So, if you want to work for yourself, but haven’t started yet, for this reason, the same exact answer applies.
If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. That’s enough motivation for me. Plus, I love writing. So, it’s easy for me to get up in the morning or stay up late at night to write sales copy.
I love the concept of making what I truly earned and deserved each month. I love being in charge of my income and owning the results.
But for other people, that’s terrifying.
The uncertainty, the constant effort to book clients, the up and down income… some people hate it.
And that’s ok. I’m glad we don’t all crave the same things in life!
Ok, I didn’t need to become a freelancer to learn this, but it definitely reinforced it.
I find it very interesting that we may all work for the same number of hours in a day, but some of us will make minimum wage, and others will make thousands.
When I was a kid, I thought it had everything to do with who was a “hard worker” and who wasn’t. Wow, that couldn’t be further from the truth!
As a freelancer, I know that what I get paid will depend entirely on the results that I can produce for a client.
If I can make a client a ton of money with my sales copy, they’ll pay more. If I can’t, they won’t… no matter how many hours I put in, or how “hard” the work was.
I see this within my clients’ businesses too. How much a client sells and how profitable they have little to do with how “hard” they work and more to do with their position in the market, their marketing assets, and how well they can leverage those things.
Sometimes, the difference between a client who is killing it in sales vs. one who is about to go under is something as simple as their ad targeting!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against hard work. I absolutely believe it is a factor. It’s just not the only factor.
Once I figured that out, it made things a lot easier. It wasn’t just about doing more or working longer, but about leveraging systems and assets to get better results faster.
Between work and school, preparing for and having a career takes up a majority of our lives. I love working, so it probably takes up even more of my life than most.
But what I’m really excited about is what my work can do for others.
I’m a big proponent of changing the world by helping others build their businesses and design their own lives. By helping clients set up simple sales systems that help them boost revenue and free up their time, they’re able to better do that.
And that’s what it’s really about… not so much the work, but the end results.
If you’re considering making the leap to working for yourself, I encourage you to pursue it. Read blogs, watch videos, see what’s out there… it’s a whole other world, a little scary, but completely worth it!
And if you don’t know where to get started, this free training will show you where and how I got started making a full-time living just by writing from my laptop.
