I Learned How to Freelance and You Can Too (If You Want)

#56. Hello, and welcome to the chaos!

I learned to freelance this year, providing social media management software engineering services.

If you have questions about freelancing, it is essentially having people pay you to provide them with specific services but now you're technically your own employer. You don't have a boss, yay! But you also have several "clients" that you need to please at any given time...

In this episode, I get into the following topics after 4 months of experience of figuring this out as I go: 

• how I got my first client
• what I would do differently if I started today
• what brought me to freelancing and why I see value in it
• power of networking in my experience
• how I noticed a massive ‘gap in the market’ if you can even call it that, in terms of social media
• how I took on a coding client even though I didn't have direct experience in their technologies
• how it’s literally insane that you make up your prices, but also you can't charge anything you want
• budgeting your life based on what clients might be able to pay you based on the size of their business or the need for your service
• aspects of instability
• how I use testimonials, portfolios, and a website landing page to pitch to new clients
• why I think the ‘local’ angle has worked well for me
• challenges of scheduling a diversified workflow
• legal stuff, financial stuff, creating contracts (the main source of confusion)
• a bit of financial insight based on previous non-tech jobs I've had and how this compares to my income so far
• freelancing goals for the future

PPP Website: https://www.rosemadelene.com/podcast

PPP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passionprojectpending/

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PPP Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6F0aDS5efhzgaCtYzI7fsA

Transcript

0:00

Hello, welcome back. Okay. I'm going to do a quick episode about my experience with freelancing. and I'm just going to jump right in. So I don't have a ton of experience, but I do have some. So if you're thinking of freelancing in any way, maybe this will be helpful for you to listen to and maybe you can avoid making some of the mistakes I've made and take away some learnings just done an ounce more of prep than I did truly before I got started. So just for context and a refresher on who I am, I'm the podcast host of Passion Project Pending. I'm the founder. I'm the creator. whatever this platform is, I started about a year and a half ago. And the goal was to learn from different entrepreneurs and interview them and connect with them and just learn more about business in general and what is possible. And so I've been doing that for a while now. And about six months ago, I was laid off from my last role in tech as a software data engineer. And I took that opportunity. As an opportunity to move home, to live with my parents, use the little savings that I had and try to start a business or try to turn the podcast into a business or whatever. It wasn't making any money at that point. It still is not, but in the last six months, lots of things have happened. One of which is I've started freelancing because the podcast wasn't making any money and I needed to. Make money as I went through all of my savings and all of my funds. So, gradually I came to see freelancing as like this really cool learning opportunity, which was really helpful for me and motivating me to do it and just like work with whoever I could. And it was kind of an accident. originally when I got home to Northern Michigan, I don't know a lot of people here anymore because it's been years since high school and college. And most of my friends from high school have moved away. So in a joint effort to meet people and then also go and maybe meet people to interview for my podcast or just local entrepreneurs in general, I started going to different entrepreneurial networking events in town and I met quite a bit of people. originally I was like backed up on interviews at that point. So I didn't really interview many people, but I did. Meet a lot of these people who, were super supportive and kind to me. And eventually I would share more about like my background and what I was able to help with. And, one of the things that I had been working on when I first moved home was growing the social media presence of the podcast. And I poured a ton of energy into that. And regardless, I had the experience with growing a Tik Tok account at some point. but this Instagram account, I felt like really confident because I have grown this brand account without doing talking videos or just like sharing a ton of personal information, like I was just sharing. Like about the podcast and the mission and things like that. And I like made it really aesthetic and I made it really engaging and I had a lot of diverse content and whatever. And as I started meeting all these business owners in town, they were starting to see the importance of social media. Maybe had an account for their business, depending on the type of business. But didn't really have anything huge going on there. There seemed to be a lack in, quality of content. And I think that I saw that as an opportunity because, I was in hyper creative mode when I first started doing this, but I would talk to people and I'd be like, listen, like the content that you're doing right now, it's not really bringing anyone in. It's not really like engaging anyone who's already there. so then what is it doing? I don't know, like if any time of your precious, precious time is being spent on this at all, don't you want to know that it's being done well and in a way that serves your business somehow? And so it just became like a thing. And, luckily I was connected with a local startup and, the mission of the startup is to like partner with local businesses and bring local residents discounts. And, basically I like met with this person kind of had to pitch myself as how I would help why I knew like the platforms and why my knowledge was valuable and why social media is valuable. And then I started, at like a very discounted rates. I learned how to make a contract. I learned how to make a business account. I learned how to just work with a client in general. And like manage expectations. It was interesting. and yeah, I just learned as I went. that's how that went. And then I would say that, beyond that. I also knew someone who had a business and knew that I could code. And so I kind of, I think I initially reached out to them and was like, if you ever need any social media help or coding, I can do both. And after a bit, they reached back out and were like, can you help us with coding? And do you know this language? And I was like, I don't have direct experience in that language, but like I could learn, I have a really solid background. And eventually they hired me as well. and I was only doing a couple hours per week, but it was really interesting. It was a really good learning experience. Like I, Just learned a lot about new technologies. And then also what a part time coding thing would even look like. And what are some of the challenges and if I would ever need part time coding help, how would that look? Or if I'm looking for part time coding help in the future, what are some things I can do to really. show these people that I'm going to help like it just started making me ask the question of how do I show these people before I'm like in their business that they should hire me and it's going to directly affect their bottom line or whatever and that is like really not always clear and sometimes you're like asking people to take A gamble on you or like with social media. I'm like trust me this matters But if you have scarce resources, like I understand why you want to know Like how that's going to help you. So that was a really interesting thing. I learned Another thing with freelancing So eventually, the money that I had in savings, started to run out, and by then, thankfully, I was making enough to cover my living expenses, which were at least halved, if not, quartered, or, made to be a third of what they were when I was living in San Francisco, but I did just get a, take on a big monthly recurring cost of my car payment, so that has made it, challenging to cut costs, but regardless, I would start to take on more and more clients. the most I had at one point was three between coding and social media and I would get accustomed to that pay and all these clients we were renewing monthly. And then I lost one and it like drastically affected my income and I like did not have a backup plan and I did not expect it at all. And that was like a little slap in the face, wake up moment of maybe you got lucky with all these people, like wanting to hire you without like a super expensive portfolio or resume or whatever. But at the end of the day, like you don't really have a system in place to account for surprises or like random changes or like things that aren't going to plan. And so that was like a big learning curve for me because that was unpleasant. that caused a lot of stress. But again, like it's a learning and there isn't a freelancer who I've interviewed on this podcast a couple months ago who does brand and web design. She did a very smart thing, saved up six months living expenses as an emergency fund before she quit her job to do this full time. And she already had, I believe she had already tried at one point, and then she already had a client going on top of her full time job before she left. So she had like, you know, an insurance policy, like she was prepared, like she knew there was a need, she had a contact, all the things. So for me, I did not have a plan. I did not have a backup money situation like I, and that has just caused a lot of stress. Like it's so cool that I'm able to like, literally, like I have my own business now. Whatever that means to you, it is my own business. Like I have an account that is getting paid directly by other people and they are my clients. And I feel like for a while, I like, was like, oh, whatever, this isn't like, a real business, so I would be like, insecure about it, but it's like, you know what? This is a business, you are getting people to pay you for what you provide, and at this point, it's a service, it's not a product, but that's a great way to learn, I'm like, I'm learning from These other business owners just by being in proximity to them and convincing them that what I'm going to provide to them is valuable to whatever their desired outcome is. So that has been like a huge learning curve. It's been very interesting. as for like pricing and stuff, wow, don't know what's going on. Like I would just guesstimate based on what I've seen, like market rate, but then another really interesting learning is that you have to be realistic depending on who you're working with and what their like budget is. And especially if you're working for like small businesses. it's not like you can charge the same than if you were charging like a, so you find like a remote gig online with like tons of employees, like they're probably going to have more of a budget for the work you're going to do. And so when I like had done a month of a reduced rate and then I wanted to raise my prices, I couldn't get what I wanted and I had to adjust because obviously I still wanted the experience And another thing that I think is really valuable if you're going to want to freelance And maybe this is obvious and common sense, but I didn't do it is to build a portfolio and maybe you like work for free for a bit, or maybe you use your own work as an example. So when you pitch new clients, like not only can you tell them why the service you're going to provide matters, you can also point to work that you've done previously and be like, do you like this? This is what I do. This is like high quality work that I've done. now you can see before you pay me that, I'm going to be able to provide you the service. Thanks. yeah, and it's just insane how you make up your prices. Like for social media, I charge one monthly fee for a certain amount of posts per week. And then with coding, I would do an hourly rate. but I think it's also possible in like software engineering that you would charge based on a project. But I think in general, like hourly rate with coding is good because a project could vary so much, with like how long it takes. Thanks. And, yeah, I would say, networking has been the only way I have survived this. I have not made, a separate account for this business. I just haven't. I've met people, people know who I am. Like, I'm at the point where, I have made things that other people have seen. So, like, it's kind of out there. social media, for example. And then there's always this possibility that like, maybe you're going to work with someone and they don't want to do it right now, but they might follow up down the line. And that actually happened to me, like with a coding thing, like at first they, they weren't down to work together, but then it worked out. and now I have added my experience with freelancing onto my work. I'm going to put my podcast website under like a new tab that says like work with me because I do like at this point like I do a lot of different things. So to make one specific website or one specific business for one specific freelance service just doesn't make sense. So I'm putting it all in one place and for each page I have a way to like. Book an intro call with me, or view my past work, or all these things, or view my resume, or whatever, view my links, whatever. and mostly I just use my website to send it to people who I'm trying to work with. No one has found me organically through there, yet. but if I were like, Investing in that like strategy of acquiring new people. I would probably like approach that differently, but it's been nice to just have a reference point for people because I've started asking for new clients and I've started reaching out to people like cold emails, whatever. Like just going around and being like, listen, I'm taking you clients. Like I want to do this for other people. And now I can direct them to my website. and be like, here you go. this is my past work. I do think the local angle works for me really well right now. Like it just feels like people who I've worked with really appreciate that. I'm like literally living here, whether it's like we can meet in person or for the content, like I can literally go take content of their business. I don't do that a ton. And I don't really do that on demand. I kind of do it on my own time, but just knowing that they can talk to me, like that's been really nice. I think like they just, Trust me more. So I'm not really sure how this would work if I were to just like fully have an exchange with someone remotely or virtually, but it's something I want to expand into. I think another thing to think about is that like scheduling work, it's kind of all over the place. I just really struggled to, like, organize my time efficiently, and like, I'd want to get all the done work, the work done in the beginning of the week, so that I would have the rest of the week free. But, that didn't work. And oftentimes it would stretch, throughout the week, it was just hard, you're communicating with, different people, and then I was doing coding and social media. But then even with social media, everyone's account and like the strategy is different. So there's a lot of just like moving pieces that sometimes it's like frustrating and it made me like nostalgic for my full time software engineering roles because even though it's 40 hours a week where you're like committed to being at the desk or like in the office or whatever like it's just like you kind of know your domain and there's not so many different variables and factors that you have to manage that it gets overwhelming. Now, I think like the more I would do this, I'd probably get like better systems in place and kind of get used to it. But to begin with, it literally felt just so chaotic. Yeah, after I got over the fact that I was like making money and I was so excited about that. I was like, okay, well, I'm not sure about like these things. Like these are the cons of it. also for like legal stuff, financial stuff, creating contracts, I'm still extremely confused. Like I am literally just like putting that off. Like even taxes. I haven't been great about Putting aside like a solid, like 25, 30 percent of my income that comes directly from these people, because I, it just hasn't been enough of a priority. Like the priority right now is literally supporting myself while I make this up as I go. I think a lot of like smart, wise, thought out people would not be in this situation. And I give myself a lot of. You know, I don't think I need to make myself feel any worse about that at this point. But, sometimes I'm like, okay, like I wish we had a better plan. But then part of the entrepreneurship thing is just start before you're ready. So I'm torn on that because it's like, you know what? When things settle down, I will go take a week or two to like sort out my finances, track everything, take out the thousands of dollars that I like need to put towards taxes next year Like invest more in learning about like contracts and all this stuff and optimizing my systems But right now like i'm just trying to get clients i'm just trying to validate that people will pay me for this So that before I invest all this time and energy into making sure my contracts are like exactly right and there's no holes and that it makes sense for them and for me and like making sure like I'm tracking every single expense correctly. And I have a really good system in place. It's I just want to make sure that this is going to be something that I'm going to spend. A lot of time on before I go like into all the steps. So that's how I've been approaching that and then There's just a couple more things that I wanted to touch on. with freelancing so Thinking about what's changed between high school college me now so Talking about the money I made as a waitress like shift by shift Versus being a reseller in my hometown between graduating college in May, 2020, and moving out to San Francisco, August, 2020, and then starting my full time software engineering role. And now that I have industry experience. I can leverage that to reference my professional abilities and then on the social media marketing side what was required there for me to show that I have the skills. Even though social media seems to be more of a DIY situation for people, but it's important to really showcase why you're going to be able to drive a different result than them doing it themselves. so yeah, like the finances, just to give a little guidance, like when I would waitress, Like I would maybe take home like 75 to like 200, maybe 250 on a really good like double shift, when I was waitressing. And so I would be doing that, and it would take either half a day or the full day, and I would do it like three to five times a week. And so, I would make good money, for sure. I can make a couple grand in a month, if I kept that up. But it was like physical effort, and nothing you do, adds onto itself. you're not getting rewarded for waitressing month after month. there is no, build to that. And that is why I'm obsessed with business because it just seems like the more you put in like to your own business the more you have potential to scale that and grow that and there's no cap and of course it's more complicated than that but who is waitressing it's cool that I can make now a couple thousand dollars a month freelancing. Even without and that could be like one condensed day of work. that is how that works for me. depending. So that's better than spending like all this time on my feet, for example. and then as for like reselling. So I used to do that as like a side hustle and I would go and buy clothes and flip them for a profit. I think the most I like really ever made in a month was like, maybe a grand, maybe two grand. And again, like that was so much manual effort. Like I would go on sourcing trips. I would post all these clothes. Like it was just tedious. It was just not it. So at the end of the day, even though freelancing is challenging and chaotic and I'm figuring it out and I'm like a little all over the place, like it's still valuable. So just a little example there. And then I just want to talk a little bit about like my plans for the future. So things, enhancement I would make if I had the time or we're prioritizing social media, whatever freelancing. So I just picked up that a lot of business owners need things like a logo design or like a website design website development, maybe with some business logic, maybe like some copywriting for emails or newsletters, or like blog posts and then yeah, social media posts, things like that. Almost like a social media strategy across every single platform. Maybe like a strategy with paid ads, understanding the ad platforms, like Google ads and like Facebook ads, meta ads, and then yeah, with coding, I'm not sure, I'm not really sure how to crack that. Like it always seems so personalized, They want to know like I don't even know how to find these people that want part time coding But they want to know if you know the language that they use or all these things and but they have an existing system Like you have to go in and learn that and that takes time and they're gonna have to pay you for that So it's just really interesting. So what I kind of plan to do in the future is like for social media It'd be great to have a system a dashboard or like my own proprietary website with a different Dashboard with metrics for clients to look at. I know there's like existing systems out there, but some way that like pertained exactly to what I do for them. And just some way to justify like raising your prices if you want to, and maybe make like individual accounts to find. Clients that aren't necessarily local. So make an Instagram account for like my social media services and then possibly hiring out people as I grow and delegating tasks, et cetera. so that I only have to do like the essential stuff at some point, like maybe like brand identity and like content strategy. and then other than that, like I would like to learn some basic graphic design, logo design. website development, website design, maybe some copywriting, maybe some ad stuff, because that just seems to be what people need. And I would love to have it on my portfolio to reference so that they like trust that I know what I'm talking about. And I know it's like a lot to learn, but I do think it's all valuable experience. And also it kind of applies to like my own business with a podcast. Like all that stuff matters to me too. So like the better I can learn and do it for myself, then I can do it for other people. And it just, it's a win, win. So as for coding, this has taught me that I really want to become better in all different sorts of coding. Especially applying for jobs this, time around, I just, I want to be, like, diversified in my skill sets, and I've just been single track, and that doesn't feel great. yeah. And then, I guess just to conclude, I do see a path to independence here. But, I'm not really sure if that's, what I want. I'm also planning to go back to work full time. Freelancing, I don't know if this is, the end all be all for me. It's kind of like freelancing or, like, consulting, Either way, I want to learn more about it, because right now, I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm Not as refined as I would like to be. I feel like this would take like years to get really good at. So I think my plan going forward, get a full time job, like maybe build freelance services on the side and do not quit a full time job until I have. Proof of income. And I know that I can do that because what really appeals to me about freelancing or having these skills that. Businesses require is that if something happens with your job or whatever and you need more income Like you can go get it like, you know that you can you know That you have the skills and like the transition from like full time in industry Even though I like literally have a great resume and I work for apple. I work for poshmark I have a computer science degree from michigan, whatever all the things that you think matter like it was hard to Like just be in the mindset of asking people for money. Hey, I can provide you the service. Will you pay me for it? Okay. So the rest of that recording was cut off. I apologize for that. Um, but I'm just going to wrap up by finishing the thought it cut off at. So yes, it's a different mindset entirely. Literally grafting for money, starting out with reduced rates, starting out as a novice and all these services, even if you're like translating what you did in industry for different companies. Like. Odds are you're doing it on the smaller scale. Otherwise they wouldn't hire a freelance or they'd hire a full-time person. Like you were doing it, your full-time role. So you have to like, kind of. Like, even if you're just doing what you did in industry, you have to translate it into a different setting. And then you have to figure out how to start your own business. May contracts set expectations. Um, just like work with people directly one-on-one and then just figure out what you're going to provide and how you're going to show that you're going to provide value. So it's complicated. It's confusing. It's kind of starting from scratch in its own way. And that was something that I didn't anticipate. And I'm grateful for that experience now, because something I've learned in general, just like with a podcast, just like with content creation, just like with. Coding and anything in life. I'm thinking at this point. Like you really just have to start and show up consistently. And over time, you will inevitably. Become more confident and just overall, like better at what you're doing. And so it's just kind of a situation you have to go through and anything in life. And right now I'm doing that with freelancing, but it is allowing me a lot of learning opportunities, some freedom, and, um, it's cool to be able to make money like this. It's, it's definitely a little stressful at times, but. It has been a cool learning experience and I definitely wouldn't trade that. So. That's all I have today. Thanks for listening. And I hope you got something out of it. Feel free to reach out on the Instagram. If you have any questions, I can try to help. With any resources, , you can find me at passion project pending on Instagram.