Devlin Peck: [00:00:00] Welcome to our series on freelancing as an instructional designer. Freelancing offers a lot of autonomy and flexibility and can be a great way to break into the field. In this series, we’ll hear from designers with successful freelance eye dee businesses, and hear valuable insights from Q&A sessions that can help you jumpstart your own instructional design career. So let’s dive in to episode 2 of the series, The Digital Nomad Instructional Designer with Chris Jorgensen. 

Devlin Peck: All right. Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us here. Hey, Chris. 

[Hey, how's it going?] 

Going well. We're here with Chris Jorgensen, and we're discussing how he became a digital nomad instructional designer here. So Chris was teaching for years, both abroad and in Canada, where he's from. And he decided he wanted to become an instructional designer.

I met him last year through the bootcamp, and then he also decided that he wanted to travel abroad, so we connected on that because that's part of what led me into this field and I know there are other people out there who are interested in doing this as well. So that's what this session is about.

We're going to learn [00:01:00] about how Chris was able to like land work and start working from his laptop, as well as what drew him to ID and what, inspired him to travel abroad while working, so I have some questions prepared here. You all are free to ask questions as well Use that Q&A tab if you can and upload the ones you want to see answered and after we get through these questions, we will get to all of your questions.

Sound good everybody? Nice, we have people coming in from all over today. So very cool. Oh, yeah .So Chris, where are you calling in from now on your travels?

Chris Jorgensen: So I'm currently in southern France in a place called Montpellier. We've been here for about a week. It's just beautiful.

It's a mid sized city. And we're staying here with some friends from Canada, and it's just been excellent. The weather's great, the food's great, and I've definitely had lots of bread and cheese. As the French do. When in Rome. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, last time we spoke you were in Berlin.

And [00:02:00] yeah, you've been living your best life on these Europe travels. But let's maybe back it up, back to when you were still in Canada. Or maybe even when you were teaching abroad. When did you decide instructional design was right for you, or how did that get on your radar?

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah so, was teachi n g, like you said. I was teaching internationally in South Korea for two years, and then I was in China for about three years. And I had been like in Asia for most of my adult life, in my twenties, I should say, and it was time to go home.

And I thought, geez this is intimidating. I've never actually taught in my own country. But I went home and I was so worried about finding a job and I found a teaching job, like right away. And everything like fell into place. It seemed like I got a job and then like I found a great deal on a car.

And then I met my girlfriend and everything seemed to be going so [00:03:00] well. I started teaching and I was teaching for about two years, and it was awesome. I really enjoyed teaching. I love kids. I love coaching. I love getting to know younger people and inspiring them, but during COVID things got really hectic.

There wasn't much support at my school and around this time, I started to look at different options besides teaching. During COVID I was working from home for a lot of the time and I was thinking like, this is really great. I could get used to this. I don't necessarily always want to be the center of attention all the time in front of a class.

And it'd be nice to see what else is out there. So I decided in that moment. I was looking online. I found lots of your videos that you had posted on YouTube and I read all your articles and stuff and I'm like, wow, this is really great. Instructional design seemed really cool.

And it was in line with some of the stuff that I was [00:04:00] doing. I was really interested in development of lesson plans and whatnot, and I thought that skill set would carry over as well. I knew the field existed. It was just a matter of like, how do I get recognized in this field?

How do I get a job? In the very beginning, I kind of went about it the traditional way, just applying for lots of jobs, and I used my teacher resume. And I didn't have much luck in the beginning but then that's when I decided I was going to join your bootcamp to get a bit more experience and learn how to use the development tools, and also start doing some volunteering with a local non profit so that I can get some experience on my resume and a reference and feel good at the same time, like helping a non profit. 

Devlin Peck: Maybe people have follow up questions on that because that is a really good way to get experience. I know people have some trouble with that, but maybe we'll save that.

If anyone has questions about that, feel free to ask them and vote on them, but maybe we'll get [00:05:00] back around to the volunteering you did because... 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, for sure. And I think that was a recommendation based on one of your articles. I just thought it made sense. And even according to that survey that you do, experience is really important like, to get a job and I thought volunteering was the best way to get experiencee. And I used that volunteering experience to leverage into my first part time ID role. [Okay.] And I used that to get a longer shorter term job and I just jumped and jumped and it worked really well. 

Devlin Peck: Okay. Okay. Good. So that was your approach. Because yeah, when I announced this session, which was really interesting to me, you're like landing all of this contract work and everything, you don't even have a finished portfolio to show and you're like, really successful with this from like everything that I can tell.

But that seems to be a key part of your approach. Yeah, you were able to trade up your experience to get better and better opportunities, volunteering to like part time to better contracts. It seems like [00:06:00] how you view your approach or what works so well for you. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, I think that experience combined with just working on some initial iterations for my portfolio and getting it up and running as fast as I could.

My philosophy was to get something like that I could use to show employers and perfect it as I went. I just wanted to really jump in the pool with both feet and that's what I ended up doing. Yeah. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. So I think we'll probably dive deeper into that, but 

let's kind of rewind a bit. So when you got more set on instructional design were you like, I want to work from my computer so that I can travel abroad? Or were you like, I like working remotely. Things are going great here in Canada. I'm just going to try to get a, yeah, just work from my place.

When did the whole like digital nomad piece come into play? 

Chris Jorgensen: You know what? That part actually started a long time ago. And I think like you, [00:07:00] Devlin, one of the perks of the job was the fact that I could do it remotely. And in many instances, I could do it from anywhere in the world.

Years and years ago when I was like teaching as an international teacher, I was traveling in Thailand and I met this guy in a hostel and he had his laptop out and we got talking and he was a digital nomad. He wasn't an instructional designer, but I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that he could just like

work his job from wherever he was. At the time, I think this is well before COVID, but I think that there weren't as many jobs that allowed you to work remotely, but it was always like an idea that was in my head. Wow, if I could ever find a way to do this, this would be amazing. Like after coming back from Asia, before Asia, I was 22 years old.

I had never traveled. And then after going to Asia. I had all these opportunities to travel on my vacations [00:08:00] and I was able to go to all these different countries and so it was really like appealing to me and when it came home and then fell into COVID, I wasn't really able to do much more traveling and I'm like, ah, this is really too bad.

Definitely a perk of the job was the fact that I could do it remotely. Now, mind you, not every job allows you to be able to work remotely from different countries. Just because a job says that it's remote doesn't necessarily mean you can leave the country. So, that's an important point.

I think there are some companies that do allow you to work internationally. But as an employee, there are only a few companies that I would know of that lets you travel the world. Some of the bigger tech companies. Contract work, however, is a different thing. And that's basically what I've been doing, is working contract jobs, full transparency, being honest and letting everyone know what I was [00:09:00] doing.

And , it's been working really well. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Yeah, I can relate to that journey very well. Yeah, when I was like 20, studied abroad, left the country for the first time, and then we studied abroad in London. Every weekend we were like going somewhere else in Europe. And I was like, yeah, this is like amazing.

And then I would go back to like Tallahassee, Florida, back to school for like years. And it's just like, I have that constant urge to basically, like, when am I going to be able to travel again? How am I going to make that work? I was looking at like teaching and like grad school.

I'm like, maybe on summers as a teacher and like when grad school may be doing like grants and stuff like doing research abroad or something. But then when I found out about instructional design, same idea. Yeah, I didn't really expect to make it work as a full time employee, but I'm like, it seems like there's freelance work and contracts out there.

I don't see why they would care where I am in the world. This is maybe like some wild idea, but it seems like it would be possible. So I'm just going to give it my all and 100 percent [00:10:00] and go towards it. [Exactly, yeah.] Same thing. It was such a cool idea. Like I could be like sitting on a train and working from my laptop.

I was like, sign me up for that. That was very appealing to me. So yeah, that's cool. And you, and yeah, I remember having that conversation with you, probably under, a little under a year ago, and you were like telling me how you want to make this happen, how you want to, do six months in Europe, basically.

And I'm like, it's possible. It's definitely possible. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, and you know what? I think at the end of the day, it comes down to like, how much do you really want to do something, right? Because I think for most people, if you ask them, do you want to travel? Almost everyone would say yes. But obviously everyone's life circumstance is a little bit different.

And everyone prioritizes things differently, like I have friends who have a similar background to me who prefer to buy a new truck or buy a bigger house rather than travel outside of the country and work as a digital nomad and kudos to them. That's pretty cool too in its own [00:11:00] way.

But my girlfriend and I decided we're going to do this and we're going to find a way to do it no matter what. [Yeah.] And I think that mindset is definitely helpful. in making it happen. Yeah.

Devlin Peck: And let's get into that a bit more, but I see some great questions coming in the chat.

 Can you talk a bit about like that mindset? Was it like anxiety inducing when you're like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna make it happen? Leaving everything behind, working from your laptop. What was that? 

Chris Jorgensen: It was nerve wracking. It was very nerve wracking. In the beginning, we weren't sure where we were going to go. We just knew we wanted to travel. My girlfriend really wanted to go to New Zealand. And, we thought about it and we were like, ah, that's quite far.

Maybe we'll get back there one day, but Europe seems to be a bit easier because we had some friends there and whatnot. But at the end of the day we knew we wanted to do this during COVID and we thought about it and planned it very early. One of the things that [00:12:00] we did was we started putting money away, of course, because we wanted to prepare for the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario being that maybe a contract wouldn't work out in the way that we thought it would, or maybe we spend more money than we thought we would. And just go from there and yeah, so we ended up like booking Airbnbs for six different countries.

So we decided we were going to spend a month in each country and we were going to book an Airbnb for each one. Now, I didn't even really know this until I started going, but if you book Airbnbs by the month, you actually have a discounted rate, and so it's not like you're paying a one day rate and timesing it by 30. You have a much cheaper rate, so it was actually cheaper than our rent in Canada to like do this, for every month. So we're like, [00:13:00] this makes sense. And we weren't exactly staying in dirty places or places that weren't clean or anything. They weren't necessarily always the biggest, but they were comfortable and they were clean.

So that was one of the things that we did to like relieve the anxiety. We had all the places booked and we thought, okay, that will have to be like, probably one of the biggest things that we can plan that will make us feel a little bit better and more prepared. We planned them, they're paid for.

So we did that. Another thing we did was we decided to get a visa. Now for Americans and Canadians, you can spend three months and you're up before you have to actually start looking into visas to stay longer. Obviously that's a broad generalization. There are certain situations, but overall you can spend three months, like in EU Schengen countries, they call them. So we [00:14:00] decided to stay longer. We were going to get a visa for Portugal. So the visa was called like a the youth mobility visa. And it was a bit of paperwork, but we just wanted it for peace of mind, and we got it. And the good thing about the visa and for a lot of the visas in Europe is that it gives you free reign to travel to other countries.

So even though we started in Portugal, we didn't necessarily have to stay in Portugal for that specific visa. We had the visa in place. We had all our places booked. And we had a little bit of money saved. We didn't have enough money to like last the whole trip, but like we thought, we'll figure it out, we'll find a way to make it work and that's what we did.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, cool. So that was enough for you. Yeah, you knew you had your places covered. I'm imagining you probably had your flight and you had a little bit left over and you were like, we're gonna make it work. Got my trusty laptop. I'll have an internet connection and I have this.[00:15:00] 

So let's maybe dive a bit deeper into that piece like the actual work because this wasn't like oh, yeah, six month vacation, live off of savings. You're like, we're going to work and travel and enjoy ourselves. You are already landing some instructional design work. You said you volunteered, you got a part time job.

I'm imagining that was in Canada. When did you start getting the contract work? Was that while you were still in Canada? 

Chris Jorgensen: No, I didn't start getting contract work. There was a smaller company that I did something with, but I didn't really start getting longer contracts until I got to Europe.

Devlin Peck: Wow. Okay. So that's interesting. You're like, I'm going to make this work. I don't have the contracts yet, but I'm going to get them. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah. Like I just knew the field existed. I knew that there were people working in the field and in my mindset, I was just saying I just need to find a way in and then I'll be okay. If people look at my resume and they see I have a little bit of experience, if they see [00:16:00] some of my portfolio stuff, they see I have a good skill set, then my theory was that it would work out fine. And like you mentioned earlier, Devlin, I wasn't finished with my portfolio.

It wasn't completely finished. So what I did was, I just took some screenshots and I put it on a Google doc, like the screenshots and I described my process. And yeah, it ended up working really well. That was enough for a lot of the employers that combined with my experience. I also talked about some of the other work that I had done with other companies and clients and the combination of those things

was enough. But I guess a different approach that I did take was that in the beginning, I was applying for a lot of jobs on job boards and it just seemed like, you're shooting fish in a barrel. It was like, really hard to stand out. There were so many people with a [00:17:00] similar amount of experience as me or more who are also applying for that job. I took a different approach and I decided what I was going to do was one thing was try networking more on LinkedIn and, that worked out really well. People started contacting me on LinkedIn as I filled out my profile and started posting a bit more.

That was a big one. And another major one was, I actually just googled like instructional design companies in fill in the blank, whatever state or province you're in. And I had a list there and I actually wrote down the emails for every single company, and I went on all of their websites and I looked into it. And the ones that I was most interested in, I just

sent them an email and I said, hey,my name is Chris. I like your philosophy toward this element of [00:18:00] instructional design, and I've attached my resume and some samples from my portfolio. And it worked out really well. Like I had quite a few, I think it was more of like I was contacting places before they were posting a need for an instructional designer. So like I was getting them before they posted the job. And I think a lot of them were like, okay this is easier rather than going through all that process. We had this guy who emailed us and his portfolio looks good and his experience looks good. So let's go for it. 

Devlin Peck: Very nice. Okay. Yeah, built up some experience volunteering part time job. You had some examples you could talk about then you optimized your LinkedIn profile. You started posting and you're getting some leads through there I'm guessing from recruiters or just teams who need some ID help, and then you actually use direct outreach to which we don't talk about as much here.

We haven't talked to many people who have done that successfully, but sounds like you're doing it pretty well. Yeah, [00:19:00] you got your resume cleaned up. You had some screenshots or Google docs to show off, to show that you know enough, like you have a process that you use, you know what you're talking about. It might not be a super polished final product, and then you just cold outreach.

Chris Jorgensen: I know, like I've heard of some people that haven't had the best luck with that kind of outreach, but I think one of the things that I did was I tried to keep it short and I tried to keep it personal. Every single company I was contacting, it wasn't like I was using one generic email.

I was personalizing it and I was only contacting the companies that seemed like their instructional design philosophy aligned with mine. In many cases, like I use their first name. Things like that to make it like you were emailing a friend or someone, rather than just an anonymous company.

Devlin Peck: Nice, so you kept it personal, you did your research, you were able to connect on whatever you learned from that research. And the people you're reaching out to, the companies you're reaching out to, they are like ID agencies. They do [00:20:00] instructional design and eLearning work for clients, and you know that they're gonna need a pool of talent who can basically help complete those projects.

So that's the type of companies you were looking for? 

Chris Jorgensen: Exactly, yeah. Subcontracting work primarily. 

Devlin Peck: Exactly, and that's how I think 99 percent of like freelancers are getting started in this space is by subcontracting, learning the ropes. Yeah, building your network basically, seeing how all these different companies do stuff. So that's awesome. Yeah, and you can make a great living doing that for your entire career doing subcontract work. So there's nothing wrong people who stay doing that the entire time too. So very cool. That's smart that you recognize that need and you're like, I'll happily fill that need.

Yeah, and I'll make it easier for you to fill that need too by going right where you need me. So you don't even have to put up a listing for it. So I could see how that would be effective. Very good. So that's how you land the work. And then how do your clients feel about you working from your laptop while you're [00:21:00] traveling Europe?

Have you had any pushback on that? You said you're transparent about it. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, I think honesty is the best policy. I've told every company that I've worked with about what I was doing, and I would really not recommend trying to do it in a sneaky way, because in this era of technology and the internet, there's a very good chance that you would get caught and your reputation would be hurt by that. [Yeah.] So I've been very forthcoming about it with all the companies that I've applied to. Mind you, a lot of the companies that I have applied to, they're already hiring people in different countries. So they're used to like working with people in different time zones.

There were a couple situations where like you're oftentimes, if you're working for one of these agencies, they'll give you an email and like a login for the Google Gmail suite and whatever. And there were a couple occasions where I got contacted by the cybersecurity people just, hey [00:22:00] your computer, it says you're in like Hungary. Is that you? And it's just, yeah, that's me. No worries. But yeah, it was very transparent with all the supervisors. And in fact, they were quite excited. Oftentimes a lot of people have a love for travel and yeah, 

I think after COVID, a lot of people, wanted to do a similar thing. It worked out well. And once again, honesty was the best policy. Contracting work was really the easiest way to do this. 

Devlin Peck: And so when you did get abroad and you started getting these clients, you had a lot of contract work, didn't you?

[Yeah.] You were saying like, you were really busy. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, so I first started and I had a few different contracts come in, and I'm like, whoa, all right. I got it. And I'm one of these people who sometimes worries. So I was like, okay, like we need to make sure we have enough work coming in, that we have enough money saved.

And I was taking on all this work the first month and I decided that I [00:23:00] was going to slow it down a little bit and just focus on the companies that were easiest to work with and that aligned with my ID philosophy. [Nice.] So like I backed up the number of hours. And the good thing is a lot of these companies when a new project is starting, they'll email you and ask you like, hey, do you have time for this project? This is what it is. This is how long it'll take. So like, once you're in with that company, you're in, and you can accept or decline anything that comes in. So lately, I've been really accepting works enough to get by, but I haven't been killing myself. I've been enjoying traveling and spending time with my partner.

Yeah, it's worked out really well. 

Devlin Peck: Okay, cool. Yeah, that's where I was going with that. Wondering about the work life balance of doing this while you're traveling. So it sounds like the first month you took on more than maybe you really would have wanted to, just because you wanted to make sure like, you weren't going to have to [00:24:00] worry about like, getting by.

And then once you realize, say, this is going to work out just fine, you' wee finding some companies you work better with than others, you scaled it back. And now you have a pretty good balance, it sounds like, between doing the work and enjoying yourself while you're abroad. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, I love it. It's it's really awesome.

If I want to take the day off, often times I can. As long as I'm not in the middle of a big project that has a tight deadline. [Yeah.] I love it. And, one thing I should mention is, you don't necessarily have to work in the same time zone as these companies that you're working with.

So oftentimes, since like you're in Europe and a lot of these companies are in North America, there will be a time difference. One thing that I always did to just make it easier for the companies is I always tried to join the daily meeting whenever it would commence. So sometimes it'd be like 7 p.m. my time, and I would just jump in the daily meeting even though I was doing most of the work [00:25:00] in my own time zone. So I was working like, eight to four or less. But I would always jump in those meetings. They were never very long. And since they knew about my situation, they knew, okay, like Chris, we'll get at this tomorrow in his time. And by the time we wake up, it's going to be finished. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah. Okay, cool. So you were like making an effort, basically. Just showing up to meetings when you can and everyone kind of knew that was the understanding. If you get the work done, we're okay, basically. 

Chris Jorgensen: It's about being honest and trying to make it easier for them.

I didn't want to risk being like, oh, can we have this meeting - can we move the team meeting earlier to accommodate myself? Okay, let's just jump in this meeting. It's like usually less than an hour. Oftentimes less than 30 minutes. It's not a big deal to jump in, so okay.

Yeah, that's what I would do. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Okay, so this is your final stop on this six month journey, right? [One more stop.] Oh, one more stop. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, we're going to Split, Croatia next month. [00:26:00] 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Okay, cool. So what's next though after this journey? So traveling all around Europe. After this, what's in store for you?

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, so I landed a job in Canada with a big company. It's super exciting. It was funny because I interviewed with them before I left. And the interview process, like a lot of these big companies, there were several rounds and it took a while. And along this time we were still thinking about traveling, and I made it to the last round of the interview, and they asked me if anything had changed about my job situation, and I said a little bit, yes I'm doing this thing where I'm going abroad for a while, b ut I'll be coming back. They actually said that, okay we'll wait for you.

 Yeah, they were really flexible and really great about it. So, they're waiting until I return to Canada and I'll be starting a job when I return to Canada. [00:27:00] 

Devlin Peck: So with your volunteer and your part time ID experience and your portfolio in progress on a Google doc, you weren't just able to freelance successfully for six months abroad, you also were able to secure a full time job at the beginning of that, and they're willing to wait for you for six months to finish up your travels and get back to Canada.

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, no, it really worked out well. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, you really, you really figured out the code here with this one. That's nice. 

Chris Jorgensen: Like you, when you say it like that, Devlin, it makes it seem like I'm killing it.

I am very lucky to have landed those opportunities, but there were lots of times where I was applying for hundreds of jobs and there were just crickets, like, where I was given tasks to do, and I would spend 10 hours doing these tasks only to be ghosted by an employer.

 There were some setbacks along the way. And, but what I tried to do was to try things in a different way when my original approach didn't work. Yeah. I [00:28:00] saw in the beginning, like applying for as many jobs as possible wasn't the best strategy. I altered my approach, I got to know these companies better. I got some experience, I worked on my portfolio, and everything together ended up in me landing this full time job. [Nice.] Yeah, it worked out quite well. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that journey, that experience sounds very similar to like, Joanna Cappuccilli. I don't know if you were at those sessions, but some people here in the audience probably were, but she talked about the same thing, like first approach was just using the resume she had and applying to like as many things as possible, but then took a step back, reoriented to the, market.

And then you worked on the portfolio, did more research, did more interview prep, updated that resume even further. So yeah, I don't mean to imply that it's like, oh yeah, it's been like on easy mode the whole time. Everything's just happening automatically. I know you put in a ton of time, you've invested money in making this all happen.

Chris Jorgensen: Oh yeah, I just want everyone out there, like who is going through a similar experience to understand that, if you might be having a hard time now landing a job [00:29:00] things get easier as long as you try changing your approach, you know, try to avoid getting in the front door, like the typical approach and try to see if there's a side door that you can go in.

If there's a different way you can approach it that other people aren't doing. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that's good perspective. Yeah, It all kind of worked out this way and you're able to have your travels and not be like, overworking yourself, worrying about money or anything like that while you're out there.

So I'm happy it worked out. I know we have a lot of questions that came in about how you sourced contract gigs. I think we answered that one probably after this question was asked. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, like I could go over it again quickly. I simply used Google and I searched up companies. So start by like, looking for companies, maybe around your area.

That was one of the approaches that I took, just companies in my province or companies in my state, instructional design companies, [00:30:00] and I collected the emails and I went on the websites for all the companies. And originally I had 50 different companies, and after going down the list, like I filtered it to 10 and I went on their websites and I saw which ones aligned best with me.

And I sent them a personalized email, like every single one. I didn't look at the career section of the websites, like to see if there was a job posted. I just assumed. They're doing work. They always need new people. So let's just send them an email and if you give them a personalized email, oftentimes people will respond back. And sometimes if they don't respond back, it's not the worst thing in the world to send them another email, like in a week or two to be persistent.

Just always being respectful of being like, hey, just checking in to see if you received my email. I'm really excited to learn more about your company.[00:31:00] If you don't have the time to chat right now, no problem. Maybe we'll cross paths again. Like always giving them that out in the email, I think is important because at the end of the day, people are busy and they don't always have time to hop on a call with you or offer you a job interview right away.

Devlin Peck: Good point. And yeah, I know it's always like a numbers game with direct outreach. I know yeah, there's power in the follow up and all of that. And I can see how that personalized approach would be more effective than like a very obviously templated kind of email where it's, okay, I'm getting spammed.

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah. One of the things that I always did too, like the subject line, I always put it as 'quick question', and people were much more likely to actually open and respond to the email. If they saw the word 'quick' there, and being honest and actually having a shorter email to them rather than like paragraphs and paragraphs.

Yeah, I found that helped. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Okay, let's see. Like I said, we haven't talked [00:32:00] much about direct outreach on this channel, so it will be cool to see if more people are finding success with this approach because like you said, yeah, these agencies, they always need good people. So if you have some experience or some work samples to back you up, seems like it would be pretty good odds.

You'll be able to get your foot in the door with some of these agencies. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, absolutely. And direct outreach has worked for me. I think at the end of the day it might not work for other people, but if you keep on refining your approach, I think you can definitely get more and more people responding. And maybe they don't have work for you right away, but when they do get work, oftentimes they might contact you.

Devlin Peck: So this leads us into this next most upvoted question from James about how you found organizations that needed volunteers for instructional designers. I'm guessing some direct outreach served you well with that, with that journey as well. But yeah, can you talk to us about how you landed that volunteer opportunity?

Chris Jorgensen: I think the easiest way [00:33:00] for me was to find companies that were already taking on volunteer IDs. Because they understood what an ID was, what their approach was, and how they could benefit the organization. So I did a few quick Google searches. I found some companies that were already hiring volunteer instructional designers, and I emailed them. I cold emailed them, and it worked out well for me. I was really determined to find a place where I could volunteer, and it worked out well. Another approach you might use, it didn't necessarily work with me right away, but I've heard some people who have had success just finding companies that align with your values, whatever your values might be. And just emailing them and letting them know you're an instructional designer, in many cases explaining what an instructional designer is, because I think a lot of people still don't even [00:34:00] know what an instructional designer does. Say what kind of services you could provide for their volunteer organization and that you could work for free.

Yeah, you have a good chance of having a lot of those people getting back to you, and you can feel good about the fact that you're volunteering with an organization that aligns with your values. That's always a plus. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense about trying to find the orgs that already are working with volunteer IDs, just because they know what you're doing. Because I guess I worry like organizations that have no idea what an instructional designer is, like it may take a lot of time or may be like risky on their end. We're going to be investing our time and resources into like working with this person. Are we actually going to get anything like valuable or useful from it?

Is it going to be a good use of our time? Even though it's like you're like working for free, it still could be like a risky kind of investment of like time or other resources on the organization's part. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, that's a good point, Devlin, right? Because all these [00:35:00] organizations, for all of them, like time is a very limited and expensive resource.

Yeah, having companies that already understand what an instructional designer does, it's definitely easier to get in with them. 

Devlin Peck: I'm just thinking out loud here, maybe another way to make that a lower risk investment when you're reaching out to potentially volunteer with people, is like letting them know what to expect. Do some discovery for like an hour or 30 minutes, and then I would need to spend like at most two or three hours with one of your subject matter experts and I could get a small project for you live.

I don't know, but maybe setting expectations around like making it a low time commitment for the volunteer organization. That may help with the response rate or may help people open up to it a bit more. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, that's definitely a plus. Yeah. I think it's also important as we're on the topic to ask for permission to use the projects that you do with this organization in your portfolio.

I know not every organization would be able to do that, but[00:36:00] that way it's definitely a win. They get something valuable and you can use what you made in your portfolio. 

Devlin Peck: Which I guess brings us to this next question from Rachel. Do you feel like companies expect freelance IDs to be really experienced since they are outsourcing the content?

Rachel has a new ID and she's afraid that she doesn't have enough experience to freelance. 

Chris Jorgensen: I would say that this is like a common thing. Like the imposter syndrome mindset of, I'm new. Other companies might not value what I have. I think at the end of the day, honesty is just the most important thing.

But like a lot of these companies, they're just looking for people to hit the ground running. So like, oftentimes these companies already have a senior instructional designer on staff who is technically like an employee. Not everyone, but like they'll have a senior ID and when they land [00:37:00] bigger projects, they look for other IDs.

So for a lot of these companies, you won't necessarily be like the senior ID right away. They would have you come in and you would work under somebody else. I would say, get some foundational experience. You don't have to be the best of the best, but definitely have experience storyboarding.

That's one of the big ones. So if you've had experience using storyboards, making storyboards, that's a pretty big thing. As long as you understand what they are. I'd imagine it'd be a little bit harder going in fresh without that. Usually, a lot of the time you're not doing development for a lot of these companies. They have a project manager, a senior ID, people who are doing the development, and then just a normal mid tier instructional designer who primarily is just storyboarding.

So I don't think [00:38:00] that's outside the skill set of anybody who has been really trying to broad their knowledge in the field. I think if you've done it a few times, if you've done some self study and taught yourself some stuff and learned about adult learning theory and how to make learning objectives and whatnot, then you should be ready. Have confidence in what you can do. I think it's really important. And don't undersell yourself. Definitely these companies, they have a shortage of time. If they see you're offering them a very low hourly rate, then sometimes they won't have as much respect for you as if you had a fair hourly rate because they'll assume you're not able to do the work and that you're just trying to get in on any project that you can. Know your worth. Know that if you've done it before, you can do it again. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah. Good, thorough response. And Rachel, just to elaborate on that. Yeah, I came into [00:39:00] this field like right out of school basically, and I freelanced from the beginning with no formal, full time corporate ID experience.

So it's more about your skill set than like the years of experience you have, because like Chris mentioned, they want someone who can come in and hit the ground running. There are people with five years of experience who may not be skilled with the certain tools that the team is using, but if you have a portfolio or a project, or even a Google doc that shows screenshots from a project and talks about the process, in Chris's case as long as you actually have the skills you're discussing, if you can demonstrate that you have the skills, that's what's going to be the most valuable to people who are evaluating potential freelancers for projects like this.

They want to see people who can do the job, not necessarily people who like check boxes, like you need to have three years of experience to touch this project. No, it's like you need to have like good Storyline skills, or yeah, you need to be able to write strong storyboards. And the best way to demonstrate that is to show work samples.

If they see your work samples are high quality, they're like, oh yeah, we can put something like this in front of our clients. Hey, you're in luck. You have a job . I don't think you should expect to go and like, oh, I'll learn [00:40:00] on the job and like, the senior ID will coach me and train me in all of that.

You definitely do need to have your skills in a good spot going into this, but I wouldn't let your lack of like formal experience discourage you, because it is more about the skills you're building. And Chris, your point about not underselling yourself does lead us into the next question from Marie Noelle.

How do you determine what to charge your clients when you're doing contract work? 

Chris Jorgensen: Oh, yes. This is a good 

Devlin Peck: question.

Maybe if you just talk about, yeah, what your approach has been, what has worked for you so far?

Chris Jorgensen: I think a good place to start is maybe just start and do a quick Google search of what the rate might be in your area. Now, oftentimes that rate is lower. But as you talk to more companies and you get more experience, you'll have a better idea of what the going rate is. So it's funny, because I've had so many conversations with these companies and I'll [00:41:00] tell them my rate and they'll be like, they'll be a little bit surprised.

And I thought my rate was high, but really it was lower than I thought. Yeah, so obviously I wouldn't start and right away and be like, yeah, a hundred dollars an hour or whatever. Let's do a little research and maybe talk to the people. And as you have more experience having interviews, talking to different companies, you'll learn what a fair rate is.

And essentially what I do is, I get more experience and I go with a new company, if I was too low the last time with the next company I talked to, like I increased my rate by 5 an hour and that's been working out well and there have been no complaints yet. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that is one way to do it.

Start where you want to start, and then each new project you go up. I know some people do it the other way that maybe they do start, if my hourly rate is 100 to a couple of people say no, I'm going to lower it to 90. Like some people work the other [00:42:00] way back down and then work their way back up.

And then there's some people who don't do hourly at all, but most subcontracting work is on hourly rates. [Yeah.] So if you're happy to do hourly rates, there's a lot of subcontract work out there for people with the ID skills.

Chris Jorgensen: Absolutely. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah. And we'll have a session where we dive deeper into that. So I know that one is highly sought after. We have a question from Emily about visas. I think we answered that about how you handled your stay in Europe. So you said you used the Portugal youth mobility visa in your specific case, but there are other options.

I know we, people were talking about moving from the EU zone to like another country and like moving back in. 

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah. Because you can essentially like spend three months in EU countries, or Schengen countries, they call it, and then go to non-Schengen countries, which would be places like Croatia. And you could Google it to see the full list. But I guess we just wanted a bit more flexibility than that. And we had to fly home like [00:43:00] through a Schengen country. So we didn't want to go in the airport and have them look at our passport and then be detained or something like that.

Although it was a bit of a nuisance getting the visa, we're happy we got it. 

Devlin Peck: Okay, good. And then Rachel wants to know if you've run into any problems with online tools being out of the country. 

Chris Jorgensen: So a lot of these companies where you're working as an instructional designer, at least most of them that I've encountered so far, and Devlin, you might have had a different experience, but I haven't had to use Storyline that much. I've been primarily storyboarding. [Nice.] As long as you have Microsoft Word, then you should be okay. If you do find a company where you're doing development as well, then yeah, you would need some other software. But I use Storyline for my portfolio stuff all the time and I've had no issues.

I've used Illustrator with no issues. [00:44:00] Pretty much all of the main software. No, I've had no issues at all. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, the storyboarding work is generally like, higher value work too. Like it's more difficult to find people with the strong instructional design and writing skill set and some with that development piece.

So that's nice that you're landing projects like that. That's good. Yeah. Someone's curious about what you do for health insurance. I don't know if you want to answer that but I know some people... 

Chris Jorgensen: I would say it depends on how risk averse you are. I know in the States, you guys need a job to have your medical insurance or whatnot.

Canada is a little bit different, but obviously I'm not covered if I'm going internationally. So we actually bought travel insurance, like expat travel insurance, and we haven't had to use it. It wasn't super expensive. But it's nice having the peace of mind that if something goes wrong, we have it.

Now, mind you, a lot of these countries, you would be really surprised by how cheap healthcare [00:45:00] is. But, I think you have to prepare for the worst case scenario. So I wouldn't recommend not getting insurance and just hoping for the best. But obviously, everyone's situation is different. So, just keep that in mind.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, travel insurance is good. I think it generally covers any like serious accidents while you're abroad, so that's nice that you have that peace of mind as well. Probably just time for a couple more questions here, but we have a question from Carmen. Can you share a little more about your timeline for making the decision, doing the volunteer work, transitioning into a part time role, and then actually flying to Europe?

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah,. The volunteering, it started quite a while ago. If you do choose to get a visa, understand that it takes time. And a lot of these embassies, they're not always the most responsive to deal with. They have so many people calling. It's not always the easiest thing in [00:46:00] the world. You would think that, oh, you just go on their website and fill out the auto form and you're good, but you actually have to collect quite a few documents that you need to submit to them, and it has to be done in a very specific way. During COVID, it was slowed down quite a bit. So we were happy that we started really early. So yeah, we got the visas going, like we started doing the visas 6 months beforehand, maybe 3 or 4 months removed. We started booking the Airbnbs a month here, a month there.

 A month seemed like a perfect amount of time to spend in each place. Obviously longer is always better, but it really allowed us to see the place and appreciate the place. So we booked a month in each place about three months before we left. And yeah, in terms of landing jobs, like I said before, my real contracting experience really started when I was abroad.

I had some smaller ones before I left, but yeah, some of [00:47:00] them had lots of work for me. Others not so much. Maybe they only had a little bit of work for me, so I really tried to diversify in the beginning and get on with a few different companies and see who was able to give me more work and who were easier to work with.

And it worked out quite well. 

Devlin Peck: So you were a teacher, and then within a year you were full time doing contract ID work from Europe. Yeah, it all happened within that year for you to get to Europe and find success doing the contract work?

Chris Jorgensen: Yeah, I was so ready to try a different career at the time. And I really wanted to get in the field, and I had a mindset, I'm going to find a way to do this. Like, I'm going to do it. And I was working on my portfolio every night, and really grinding, and like on my lunch hours as a teacher, like working on it.

It was my number one priority in my life at the time. And I think it's just like with anything if you [00:48:00] prioritize something, then often you'll find a way to get it done. 

Devlin Peck: Very nice. And it seems like you're pretty happy with how things have been going, enjoying that weather over there in southern France right now.

Chris Jorgensen: We're having the best time. We went out to dinner, like my partner and I and our friends and like we had this great French meal and French wine. And yeah, it was really awesome. It's been great overall. Like, I couldn't imagine things going better. And, along the way obviously, there were lots of things that could have made us change course and go back, but we're really happy that we were able to stay here and that we followed through. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. Thank you for sharing your journey with us and giving us some actionable tips along the way to help other people do the same.

It's okay if people connect with you on LinkedIn and follow along with the journey? 

Chris Jorgensen: Oh, please, yeah. I'm always looking to chat with people in the ID world. So please add me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. And [00:49:00] I'll always get back to that as soon as I can. Yeah, I love meeting new people. So please get at me. 

Devlin Peck: Thank you, Chris. And yeah, we'll follow along with your journey and see where it takes you next. So we'll talk to you soon, Chris. 

[Yeah, let's talk again soon.]

Bye, Chris. Bye, everybody.