Exciting announcement: I’ve launched a new Skillshare course, How to Start Freelancing: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Basics! My link will give you a free one-month trial of Skillshare so you can check out my course as well as any other content you’d like to explore on the platform. Think of it like a Netflix subscription, except the videos are designed to teach you new skills and inspire you to do creative projects. In this post, I’ll share a little more about why I created the course and what you can expect to learn from it.
Back when I was working full-time and dreaming about freelancing, I had a lot of concerns about making this transition. These were things like:
- I’ll never make enough money as a freelancer to support myself. I’ll probably need to have some sort of part-time job in order to make it work financially.
- I don’t have the business know-how to be a full-time freelancer. There are so many ins and outs of running a business that I’m not aware of and I’ll probably make a huge mistake that will lead to catastrophic financial ruin.
- My family and friends aren’t going to support me leaving my “stable” job to go out and do something unpredictable like freelancing.
And the list goes on and on. If you’ve been flirting with the idea of freelancing, you’ve likely told yourself many stories like these.
However, now that I’m about to celebrate my fifth anniversary of freelancing, I feel like I’m in a good spot to say that those concerns were overblown and overpowering.
Yes, it’s hard to leave a steady paycheck and health benefits (especially when you live in the US). And yes, freelancing does come with some uncertainty and unpredictability. But so does working a full-time job! Even those “stable” jobs can be impacted by layoffs or restructuring. And even if they aren’t, companies change over time and a job that might have been dreamy when you started can quickly become the stuff of nightmares.
The benefits of freelancing—the freedom and flexibility and the power to work when and where I want to—make the uncertainty (and occasional tediousness of taxes and tracking expenses) worthwhile to me.
But I know that it can be hard to take the leap from full-time job to full-time freelancing. That’s why I created this course. I walk you through the essential steps to get your freelance business up and running. It includes lessons in:
- Understanding your motivation and crafting your ideal working conditions
- Estimating your expenses and earnings (and setting your rates and working hours accordingly)
- Finding clients
- Figuring out your finances
- And much more!
If you’d like to learn more, you can check out the introductory video below, or check out the course on Skillshare here. And if you know of anyone who might benefit from taking the course, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with them!
Video by Tiny Oak Media
Main image photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash