Freelance Benefits - Mistakes & Growth

I just wanted to do a quick overview of freelancing, becoming an entrepreneur, becoming your own boss in the freelance world.

 

There has been a huge growing trend since 2006 in freelancing. I saw a piece of data from 2006 I believe in the US 7 million freelancers by 2020 were supposed to be 42 million independent contractors, freelancers that include of course software developers, web designers.

 

Why is there this growing trend towards beginning an independent contractor freelancer? I  think it’s because of the old contract, the old expectation between employee and employer has been broken over the years, in that people start seeing where businesses would fire or lay off people if it suits their purposes whereas in the 50s and 60s to a certain extent of 70s there was a culture at least in the west, where once you got hired into a company you stayed there your whole life and you got a nice pension Bla Bla Bla! But, then people started getting the short end of the stick from large corporations so they started saying to ourselves, well maybe I should be independent and this led to other types of thinking where people started considering the idea that maybe instead of having to adhere to a lifestyle and a set of parameter. 

 

A work schedule as dictated by the man by some large corporation by HR departments perhaps you could create your own life, perhaps you can create your own set of circumstances and rules maybe your rules is not to have any rules, so for me if you know my background I have been a freelance writer for over 8 years and since then have developed my skills to make money as well with my own rules.

 

I can tell you that one of the huge advantages of being your own boss or being the freelancer of having your own business is a choice is freedom as I just mentioned in other articles.

 

One of the great things I love to do one of my secret pleasures is the ability to fire clients, love firing clients, because what am I when it comes they used to do business with in the early nineties with my first company which was the import-export company and they were frozen food… I’ll call manufacturer they would go into the ocean and grab all kinds of shrimp and freeze them up and sell and then it was a very popular line frozen food use in the pet industry. I got the well my company we got the exclusive rights to that line of frozen foods for the province up, my company got the distribution right for this frozen food line and even though we were a small company and I spoke to the president of that company and he knew that a very large company in our area wanted the right to that and he knew that they will buy us again a significant amount of the product from us and reason he did not give the distribution to that company, that larger company, the owner told me he said - I did not go into business to have to deal with people I didn’t like and that was a very interesting statement to me because it taught me something about business what are the main reason of going into business for yourself. Is that you have the ability? you especially once you’re established? Do you have the ability to pick and choose with whom you deal? whether people that you hire people that you do, people who you do business with clients, etc that’s why one of the things I wrote in many articles and I also talk about in my entrepreneur blogs much better off with many small clients as opposed to a few big clients. 

 

What noob mistakes & what are the beginner's mistakes?

In business mistakes that people make is they have this dream of dealing with big clients that is the worst thing you could possibly have. As a business owner, you want to have many small clients why? because when you have many small clients they have no power, no leverage over you, and if you fire them it doesn’t have any impact in term of your bottom line or hardly noticeable impact that mean… let’s say you have two big clients and roughly every client's worth half of your income for the year. Now what will happen is that you will build up an infrastructure and workflow to satisfy these two big clients and there’s a cost to that and then what happens is that you become very dependent on each of these two big clients? if what are these big clients should leave you and you lose half of your income that really hard especially if you have and infrastructure in place, you have employees, or rent to pay, or leases to pay, based on satisfying the requirement of these big clients. The big client will likely know and smell that you’re dependent on and as a result, they start throwing their weight around not all the time but many of the times. 

 

I’ve seen it first then and it’s been attempted on me in the past. On the other hand, if you have let’s say 30 small clients where each client is worth it? I don’t know - 3% of your income something like then you know 4% depending, how you look at it meaning these small clients are inconsequential of themselves let’s say I’ll use a round number, you have 10 clients in each of these clients are worth 10% of your work whatever these clients start giving you lip starts bothering you if you lose them you only lose 10% of your business insignificantly, not important! the fact that you have 10 other client nine of the client if you get rid of that tenth client because they jerks and they’re giving you a headache it’s not a big deal. You say “cannot work together sorry bye!” or as we say up here in our region “sell you” that is one of the huge advantages of being self-employed or being a freelancer having your own business is the ability to choose with whom and how and with whom you work, who you deal with this is a big advantage of being a freelancer. 

 

Hire People & work together -

Do you get to choose exactly the type of work that you want to do? I essentially just hire people to do the stuff I don’t want to do and I specifically try to find people who are better at those things in particular. Another big advantage of being your own boss is that you can choose when you work what time of the day with days whether you get to work on Monday or Tuesday or not, whether you get work in the mornings the afternoons at night etc.

 

There are just so many huge advantages in terms of personal freedoms that come with being your own business, owner. Now, this doesn’t come at no cost there is a cost to be you’re self-employed being a freelancer. 

 

Investments as a freelancer –

The cost is, in the beginning, there is some rough spot as you figure out your workflow as you establish your client base as you develop your skills as a freelancer as an entrepreneur there’s be some rough points there’s no question about it you go to learn these things.

 

Once you get back past that initial stage where you’re just establishing the mechanism, this system that is your business whatever your business it happens to be, then it becomes much easier. 

 

Benefits of being a freelancer -

The last thing I am going to mention about being you own boss, being a freelancer or self-employed is that you have huge tax advantages, typically you have huge taxes and advantage so depending on where you live going it to be a little bit different here, but essential most govt will put into place laws and a tax system that benefits that courage small business development and this is important because small business employs about 80% of the population, so if you go into small business there is some high risk and there are some problems initially but think most of the problems resolved. If you just have a proper system in place that being said there are huge tax advantages that the government does provide to make it easier for you to get up and running and that’s the payoff. 

 

For example, let’s say you’re a software developer that costs of your computers, the cost of your high-speed internet, possible the cost of yourself, your smartphones, etc. anything any piece of equipment and services but, is related to you? business can be deducted from the income that you earn. The point is that they're just huge tax advantages but make it easier for you to build a business and to start your business and to grow your business that’s pretty much. Read more detail about freelancing and its benefits.

 

Growth of the freelancer –

I just want to write something on the growth of the freelancer, the growth of the self- employee, individual it's remarkable to me because what I was doing this back in the day? I was 18 or 19 years old started first business even into my mid-20s and late 20s I hardly met anybody, In my age, most people started businesses in their early 30s by the time. In my 30s I was pretty much I was there already so it was interesting to see, now at this time how the whole game has shifted were a lot of younger people are realizing the huge advantages and I just named a few of them of having your own business versus working for somebody that being said it’s not easy at first you have to have the wherewithal and the game plan to be able to execute on it but it’s very doable. 

 

let me close with this I think it’s almost inventible their business will be successful if you have a good game plan and you manage your fund the only thing that drives out of business is a lack of money so money management skills are huge parts of building your business.

 

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Last Modified: Sep 14, 2020