We may have different reasons for wanting to go freelance.
Most of us wanted freedom outside the four walls of our company office. Some of us are tired of the robotic lifestyle of getting out of bed, preparing for work, working, then sleep. Because our presence is needed at work, we miss out on important family events and gatherings. We may not even have time to hang out with our kids and be with them during their most important times.
These are just some of the reasons behind it. Nevertheless, making a decision to finally move to freelance full-time is never easy. After all, you’re giving away the hard-earned experience, promotion, health benefits, and salary increases.
Moreover, you have more independent responsibilities to accomplish, such as paying for your taxes, securing your insurance and the like.
But I’m not here to scare you off in trying to start your freelance career. I am here to help you prepare for what is to come, and give you points on when’s the right moment to quit work and enter the life of freelancing.
Start saving and budget well
It’s best to set aside money that would last for a few months, especially when you have kids or people you take care of. Properly budget to be able to know how much you may need to earn in a month to be able to take care of your monthly expenses.
Moreover, having extra budget helps during unexpected times where invoices come late, clients suddenly disappears without paying and other unfortunate mishaps. This could happen to everyone which is why saving and budgeting is important
Try every option
While still in your current job, try everything that interests you until you find what you really like. It’s important to know what you’re passionate about so you can easily do your craft.
It would be difficult to start anew if you realized you didn’t like what you are doing halfway, as you may need to repeat steps again.
Make sure to take note of what interests you while you try different things out. Think if these interests would make this career change work, then invest more time planning towards it. Either way, it’s important to do stuff than just further planning, so make sure to try out everything to move forward.
Finding your direction
After you’ve tried a lot of what you’re interested in and listed the ones that would effectively jumpstart your freelance career, it is time to pick one niche. It is much recommended to build your freelance career based on your current skill set, as this would give you an advantage in finding clients.
But it does not mean you can’t learn an entirely new skill set for your preferred freelance job. It’s just that it would take much time to do so. Nevertheless, what’s important is you decide what exactly you can do, and improve it.
Before fully committing to freelancing, test out your business idea
By testing the waters, you’d get a slight first-hand experience on what you’re about to jump into. Moreover, you’d be able to check if you really enjoy the work and know if you’re good at it.
In addition, you can offer your services to a few people for a small price (or for free). It would act as a test drive to check if you’d be able to give them the right services. Ask them for feedback afterward and use it to improve yourself.
If you enjoy the work but isn’t too familiar on how it runs, you can always attend some online classes or webinars to keep you informed.
Don’t reverse engineer your salary to come with a rate
Your salary in your day job would be different from that of your freelance projects. Considering you could be working with different clients at a time, some long term and some term.
Dividing your monthly salary per day and charging that amount to your clients wouldn’t be practical. After all, your clients have spent a lot already just trying to recruit people. This involves job ads, finder fees, recruiter fees and the like.
If your charge is too high, you may find it difficult to get clients, especially if most people you sent your proposals to are just small businesses.
Make sure that the charge that you’re going to offer will depend on how flexible you are. This would mean how easy clients would be able to receive your services, find you when needed and close the project afterwards.
Get your first clients now
After successfully testing out your planned business or service, it’s best to get your first clients before leaving your full-time job. This would ensure that you have income continuously coming in.
Moreover, you should also set things up for your business already, especially the ones that don’t bring in money. This includes setting up a website, creating a business plan, opening a bank account for virtual payments and more.
They are important to be done now as when you leave your office job, you should focus on finding people that will bring in money. This includes joining networking events and promoting your business through social media.
Prepare yourself to be in charge of your own advancement
Being a freelancer would mean managing almost everything. You are your own boss and employee. So when you wanted a raise or want to get promoted, it will be all up to you.
How will a freelancer do that? Well, if you want a raise, you can either charge more or work more projects or hours. If you want to be promoted, you can hire subcontractors to work with, or for you.
This also means that when you want to learn or improve your skills, you also have to spend the training and seminars yourself. Make sure to be able to differentiate personal money from business money.
Being a full-time freelancer may not be for everyone. It takes diligence and hard work to start from scratch and build your own business by offering your skills and services. Yes, it has sacrifices when it comes to investing time and money but it would bear better fruits in the end.
When you follow the tips above you’d eventually find yourself ready to take the big leap towards freelancing, and surely, when you do, you’re less likely to fail.
