Starting A Successful Business
I’ve recently had several people tell me that they’d like to jump into freelancing soon and quit their full-time jobs. The problem is, they have no idea where to begin so they keep putting the idea off. I’ve seen this a lot with people. We’re so used to what we’re already doing that it’s scary to think of trying something new.
This problem hits me very close to home. I know two people very close to me that have great ideas for businesses – but they’re too afraid to make the leap. They have “bills”, they have “needs”, they have no “time”. With this mindset, they will never leave their crappy jobs. They’ll never strike out on their own and they’ll never be able to do what they really want to do. It’s really sad.
I hate to see anyone stuck in this rut, and if you’re wondering if you should go out on your own, I’m here for you. I’m here to tell you that while it is a lot of hard work, it isn’t impossible. In fact, once you get the ball rolling, I might even go as far as to say it’s easy. Sure it’s scary, but is anything awesome not at first?
Making The Leap
I personally made the decision to quit my job and freelance pretty much at the last minute. While I don’t advise this route at all, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Once you decide you do want to run your own business, it’s important to act quickly or risk never doing it at all. If at all possible, try to save up for a couple months of expenses before you leave. And try to leave on amicable terms.
When first starting out, you don’t need to spend any money. Use your home computer, make yourself a makeshift office if you don’t already have a dedicated space at home. If you’re a designer or developer, you probably already have all the software you need at home, but if not, there are plenty of free resources available.
Finding Inspiration
The biggest help I’ve found in starting a new business or venture, is to listen to others who’ve done it. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to podcasts, reading business books and following freelance blogs. Even though the advice starts sounding the same after awhile, listening to people talk about how they got started is inspiring enough to kick your butt in high gear. It’s how I was able to start a couple of side projects of my own.
The most important thing you can do is to get moving while you have that motivation.
Where’s The Work?
The biggest fear people have about going out on their own is finding the work. Of course if you just sit there at your desk, staring at your monitor and expecting work to come to you, it will never happen and you’ll starve to death.
You must, especially in the beginning, get out there in the virtual world and find work. Become well known in your online community so people think of you when they need something. Follow twitter feeds of people asking for help and offer your services. Subscribe to (non-bidding) job boards and reply to the ads. There’s plenty of ways to find work and work is never in a shortage.
If you want to find local work, then get out to local events. Talk to business owners about their websites or copy or whatever it is you do. If you don’t have a portfolio to show, offer work in exchange for their services.
What are you waiting for?
What’s keeping you from going out on your own?
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Awesome tips Amber. I agree with everything you’ve said in this article, freelancing can be scary – especially when work is dry but sometimes the risk can take your career to new levels. Cheers.
Thanks! Dry times can actually be productive if you spend time on your business, portfolio, networking etc. I look forward to them for a break as well
Agree.
I think one more thing to consider before switching to freelancing is either you want to work alone or with some friends? as sometimes it starts to get boring pretty soon.
As for me I just cannot live without friends and started my freelancing business by convincing two of my friends to join me and now with in one year we have a team of 7 people working in the same direction. I personally enjoy working with people and moving forward together.
As they say “if you want to go fast go alone and if you want to go long go together”
Ah nice, I never thought of that before! I do fine working alone, but every since my fiance’s job started letting him work from home 2 days a week, I must admit I enjoy the company. Even if we never really speak to each other during work, it’s still comforting to have another body in the room.
Well, that will be me in around four months time! I have quit my job and am moving house next week with agreement from my current employer to work my notice out as a home worker, that will give me the time to get started on the freelance side of things.
Fortunately I already have a side-line as a wedding photographer and if I can quickly build up the web development work I’ll be alright.
It is scary, it’s the not knowing what work you’re going to get that worries me the most. I have a family to provide for so it’s not just me that I have to look out for.
One of things we have been doing for a while now is living frugally and saving what we can. As a result we have some reasonable savings and a relatively low cost base. I’m hoping that will tide us through any fallow periods.
Sometimes you just have to take that leap, and chances are you’ll be happier for it.
Thanks for the excellent, and concise, advice Amber – your blog has been a help in finding direction.
Thank you for reading! I know it’s tough when you have expenses and bills to pay, but sometimes that gives you the real motivation you need to succeed. Otherwise you’d just lag around.
Good luck and let me know how it goes!
Great tips!… I’m starting as a freelancer myself (and I must say I’ve been starting for too long and haven’t really make the jump) and Although the situation on your country es way too different to here (Colombia) pretty much all you say there can be used here.
As I just moved out from my parents house I still need this office job to pay the bills and everything else. But I’m already saving some money to start my freelance career fulltime as soon as possible
Again, great article!
Good luck!
You mentioned about non-bidding job boards. What’s wrong with the “bidding concept”. For example i have several clients from freelancer.com which is a bidding job board
Because they require a lot of time to win one, for very little pay. Your time is best serve making clients come to you, not you chasing clients for forever
Jumping into freelancing can be scary. Hell, it’s scary for me still at times and I’ve been doing it full-time for the last couple years. Luckily, I always pull through, and I know things should even out even more after school’s done with. These are such great tips, Amber, and I also encourage those who dream of it to take the plunge — whether that means taking on their first freelance gig, or just simply starting to save up and plan.
I love this post. My dream is to be a part-time freelancer and a full-time in-house application developer (I’m making the freelance part right now). It’s good, because if I lose my job, I still have a safety net to fall back on, which is something I’m learning now since I lost my job a while ago.
I love the work I do, so I strive to put in 120% in every project. I agree with the bidding sites, I tried them long ago and gave up. It sucked up my time and I didn’t get anything from it anyway, and of course the cheapest will win.
I prefer to make connections with people online or locally, and for them to know what services I offer. As long as I’m friendly and they know I can service them, it’s been easy to pull clients this way. I don’t place focus on competition, I place it on developing my skills and completing my own projects.
WHERE’S THE WORK? This is what bothered me long ago. But it’s not really that bad or bad at all I should say. Where is the work = where is the people. There are different categories of clients and the work will come when you interact with people, you just need the patience for work to build (at this point your portfolio will develop).
I think of it like a tree. It starts out like a seed with nothing. Eventually a trunk grows and branches stem from it. From those stems, leaves will come (think of the leaves as moola haha =P ).
You know it’s good I caught this, as I am currently looking into jumping into freelance slowly as a part timer into full time. My biggest problem I think is finding jobs and ones that sooth me. Working locally here in the islands can be tough and finding overseas can be difficult. I have tried cold emailing with little success in the last few days. Any tips on how find work using cold emails or jobs overall?
Thanks
I live in los angeles and work for a large e-commerce presence that owns multiple keyword domain names. i am the single front-end developer for their suite of sites. I’ve written the important parts of the front-end. ‘All of their JavaScript code -very involved ajax/animation code w/no libraries. I also write back-end services and add tables to their database, scripts to automate things…
my purpose in writing this is not to boast.
I’m 27 and I work for around ~$11/hour and if my widowed grandmother was not helping me who knows where I would be… I work 50+ hour weeks.
I’m not saying this with shame or pride, but I just wanted to share my own experience here.