Transcripts
1. Lesson 1: Introduction: Hi, I'm Melissa Susan. Oh, I'm a freelance writer, editor and content marketer. I've been running my
freelance business since October 2017. If you're like me,
you've been dreaming about starting your freelance
business for a long time. Maybe you've even worked on a
side project here or there. But you might be feeling worried about making the leap into
full-time freelancing. That's okay. It's normal to be nervous about making
this transition. In this course, we're going
to walk through some of the major steps need to take to get your freelance
business up and running. My goal is to take some
of the mystery out of this process and give you the confidence you
need to take action. Since I'm a writer and editor, I'm mostly going to
share tips based on my experience running a freelance
service-based business. My advice in this course is
probably most useful for others who want to do similar kinds of
service-based businesses. But even if that
doesn't sound like you, you're welcome to
check out any lessons that you think might
apply to your situation. A quick note and disclaimer. I will be sharing some
tips about things like taxes and
business licenses. These can vary a lot depending
on where you're based. My advice is intended
to be general guidance, but it's a good idea to look
into local resources to make sure you're doing what's right for where you're
running your business. Thanks for joining
my Skillshare class. Please take a moment to follow
me on Skillshare. Ready? Let's get started.
2. Lesson 2: Deciding if Freelancing is Right for You: Lesson to deciding if
freelancing is right for you. Why become a freelancer? There are so many reasons why freelancing
can be appealing. Here are just a few. You get freedom and
flexibility to choose when, where, and how you work. You can design your life
around the type of work you find meaningful
and enjoyable. You can avoid a lot of
the frustrations and annoyances of being a full-time
employee at a company. You create a clear
connection between your efforts and the
financial rewards you receive in return. As one of my friends once said, When you're working
for a company, no matter how hard you work, you're really only helping
the company make money. It's true. Apart from the occasional
bonus or a raise, the impact you feel
personally is minimal. When you work for yourself, that's no longer the case. All your efforts come back to you and go to taxes, but
we'll get to that later. Of course, there are
some downsides to these can include
no steady paycheck. You don't automatically
get benefits like health insurance
or a 401 k plan. You have to deal with
various administrative tasks like tracking expenses and
following up on invoices. Your taxes become a lot more complicated when
deciding whether freelancing is worth it for you. It helps to spend some time thinking through
the pros and cons. You can take a look at the
points I've just outlined and maybe spend some time adding
your own ideas to each list. How do you feel when you
imagine each scenario? Does the excitement of freedom outweigh the tediousness
of tracking expenses? Are you okay with a
little uncertainty in exchange for
more flexibility? Keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily have to be
an either or decision. There are so many ways
to work around or delegate tasks you
don't want to take on. You can put systems in
place to create steady, reliable income as a freelancer. And you can always
experiment with freelancing as a side hustle before
committing to it full time. So if freelancing
appeals to you, I say go for it
for your project, take some time to brainstorm your own list of the pros
and cons of freelancing. If you'd like, you can upload your list to
share it with the group.
3. Lesson 3: Begin by Understanding Your Motivation: Lesson three, begin by
understanding your motivation. Taking the time for some
self-reflection can be really helpful at the beginning of your freelancing journey. What is it that appeals
to you about freelancing? For example, you
might be thinking, I have so many ideas for how to improve my
current company. I need more flexibility
in my schedule. I'm tired of feeling
like I'm running on a hamster wheel of achievement
and not getting anywhere. I'm worried about the
long-term prospects of my job or company. I want to choose
when and how I work. I get bored doing the
same thing day after day. I want to experiment
with lots of different projects and clients. There are some
aspects of my job I love and other aspects
I really don't enjoy. If I could eliminate those
not so enjoyable parts, it would make my
life so much better. Once you have clarity around your motivation and
ideal working situation, you can consider the
best path forward. This could be
full-time freelancing, taking on some freelance
work as a side hustle, or maybe making some changes
to your current job. From here on out, I'll be focusing on the
first two scenarios. If you decide you'd
just like to make some changes to
your current job, your best bet is to talk
to your manager and HR or People team about what you'd like
to do differently. For example, you might be able to negotiate
working from home. We're adding more flexibility
to your working hours. With the pandemic, we've seen a lot more companies become open to both of
these possibilities. It's expensive and difficult for companies to
hire new employees. That's why many
companies would rather keep their current
employees and lose them. So you might have more
bargaining power than you think. You might have the
opportunity to work on cross-functional or
short-term projects that are aligned
with your goals. You just need to share your aspirations with your manager. For your project. Write out your own
motivation for freelancing. What is it you're hoping to achieve by making this change? What will your ideal
freelancing life look like? You might even create a
sample schedule of what you'd like a typical day to look
like as a freelancer, upload it and share it with the group so we can
cheer each other on.
4. Lesson 4: Estimating Your Expenses and Earnings: Lesson four. The steps you need to take to become a full-time freelancer. Estimating expenses
and earnings. Let's say you've
made up your mind that you'd like to
start freelancing, but you don't want to quit
your job without a plan. What exactly does this mean? When I hear the
term business plan, I imagine a slide deck that's full of charts and statistics. It gives me a headache,
just thinking about it. I won't lie. You will probably
need a couple of simple spreadsheets
and some basic math. But you don't need to be a Data wizard to come up with
your basic business plan. I'm going to outline some of
the most important steps. Keep in mind that there's
flexibility here. This is more of a
loose framework than an absolute blueprint. I'm recommending the
order that worked for me, but feel free to shuffle
things around if you think a different order
would be better for you. The first few steps
are all about estimating your
earnings and expenses. You wanna make sure
you're earning and saving enough to
live comfortably. Let's explore a few
ways you can do that. Start by calculating
your minimum earnings. If you're not going to have a steady paycheck from
a single employer. You'll want to understand how much money you need to
bring it in each month. To do this, look at
your monthly spending, both for business costs
and personal life. If you use a credit card
for most of your expenses, you can get a good
sense of your spending just by looking at your
monthly account statements. Some cards even automatically categorize expenses for you. You can get similar
information about your debit card purchases
from your bank statements. Don't use a credit
or debit card often, you'll probably want to start tracking your expenses manually. You can go super old school and use a notebook
where you write down everything or just
start a Google Sheet. There are also plenty
of apps like mint, good budget and y in a b, that could come in handy. No matter which
option you choose. This is a good habit to
get into any way since you'll want to keep tabs on
all your business expenses. We'll cover this in more
detail a little later. Pro tip. It can be helpful to divide your expenses into need to
haves and nice to haves. I love getting my nails done, but I can live without
a monthly Medicare. So that goes into the
nice-to-have category. Paying my rent is
non negotiable, so it's a need to have
tally everything up. So you have two totals. One, That's your
absolute bare minimum, and when that's your living, the lifestyle to which
I've become accustomed. Now, you know what
you'll need to make on a monthly basis, depending on where you live, you'll need to set
aside different amounts for state and
federal income tax. So be sure to factor that into. For example, federal taxes
in the US are about 30%. So you'll want to add an extra 30% to the number
you've come up with. For simplicity sake, let's say your monthly expenses
come to $1000. In that case, you need to pay around $300 in federal taxes. So you really need to make 1300s to pocket the 1 thousand you need to
cover your expenses. Don't forget that if your
state also has income tax, you'll need to include
that amount as well. Set your rate. How much will
you charge for your work? This is a big and important
question for you to decide, but it's not set in stone. One of the advantages
of freelancing is that you can change
this number at anytime. You'll want to take a few
factors into consideration. How much experience you have, how specialized your subject
matter knowledge is, and how much of your
time is worth to you. When I first started
freelancing as a side hustle, I thought how much I
value an hour of my time that I could be spending with friends or doing something fun. This rate work just fine when it was in addition to
my main income. But I quickly realized it was too low for supporting myself. Once I realized that
I needed to set aside roughly 40% of what I made to cover state and
federal taxes. I decided I should
raise my rates. If you really have
no idea what to charge, do some research. There are plenty of resources
out there to help you get a sense of what other
freelancers are charging. Pro tip. When thinking about your rates, consider that it's usually an amazingly good deal for the companies that
are hiring you. When they hire a
full-time employee, they have to pay for their
health care taxes, et cetera. Plus, there are a lot
of expenses, resources, and risks involved in actually recruiting a new
full-time employee. So it's actually a really good
deal to hire a freelancer. It's a low risk, low hassle, and relatively low cost way
of getting a project done. Since the client is saving money they would be paying in taxes, you shouldn't feel guilty about charging a bit more
to make up for it. This should give you
the confidence you need to charge a little extra. Figure out how much
you'll need to work. You might do a little
bit of back and forth between these
first three steps, you can map out a few
possible scenarios with different hourly rates
or project rates to see what sounds good
to you and what would allow you to have the type
of lifestyle you want. But once you know how much you need to make and
what your rate is, you can figure out the
minimum number of hours our projects you'll need
to take on each month. N, We're almost
done with the math. Going through this step
will help you line up the appropriate
amount of client work. I found that this was helpful
to me when I first started, but I quickly ended up taking on more hours than my minimum. After all, why wouldn't I
make more money if I could? This is one of the biggest
challenges of freelancing. Taking on just the
right amount of work. It's always a
balancing act between feeling like you have
too much or too little. This is something you'll get
a better sense of overtime. But knowing your absolute
minimum at the outset is essential for your project. Spend some time going
through each of the steps we've looked
at in this lesson. Calculating your
minimum earnings, setting your rate, and figuring out how much
you'll need to work. You don't have to
share the numbers with everyone if you don't
feel comfortable. But let us know if you had any important learnings or
insights from this process.
5. Lesson 5: Finding Clients : Lesson five. The steps you need
to take to become a full-time freelancer,
finding clients. Now you know exactly
how many hours of client work you're
looking to line up. How do you connect with clients and failure book of business, here are my recommendations. Tack your existing network. Part one. Start with people you know, you've worked with and like, ask them if they need any help. Don't be afraid to reach out
to your previous employers. They can be great
clients because you're already familiar
with the business, customers and people
you'd be working with. This also means you'll be
able to get ramped up faster, which is great for
your clients too. When you're getting ready to go freelance, plant the seeds. Let people know you're open
to taking on freelance work. Listen to people who say
they might be looking. Take these people out for
coffee to learn more. Follow up. If you want to get fancy, you can start a
spreadsheet to keep track of the people
you've talked to, what they said they
were looking for. And when you followed up, not every prospect will turn into a client and that's okay. Don't get discouraged. Just be open to putting
yourself out there and being proactive
without being pushy. Tap your existing network. Part two, Let's say you've gone through the step
I outlined above. The second part of tapping your network is to
ask people you know, and trust if they can refer or introduce
you to anyone else. Your contacts may not be
hiring right at the moment, but their contacts, maybe
the same rules apply here. You might want to create a
system for keeping track of people you've reached out
to what they've said. And when you followed up, if you end up getting a client through a personal referral, be sure to let them know. I think it's a nice touch
to send a thank you note and maybe a small
gesture of your appreciation, like a Starbucks gift card. You want to make it
easy and pleasant for your contexts to
refer you to others. I've found the most success with personal connections
and referrals, but there are a few other
tactics you can try. Get a professional
certification or your business listed
in a directory. I completed Copyblogger certified content
marketer program. As a result, I'm listed in their directory of
content marketers. You can look for similar opportunities to
have your name and website listed with other
professionals in your field. In my experience, this
hasn't been a good source of prospects because it
tends to be too broad. And many people just email
everyone in the directory. But it's worth a try. You could get completely
different results. Market yourself
through social media, depending on the type of
clients you'll be working with and which social
media platforms they use. You can work on building out your presence on that platform. Don't feel like you need to be active on every single platform. Experimental little
and see how it goes. By the way. If you decide LinkedIn as a platform
you'd like to use, be sure to check out my
other Skillshare course that's all about building your freelance brand
and business on LinkedIn hashtag,
shameless plug. What do you do on social media? Generally, it's a
good idea to connect with other people in
similar industries. Build your network and learn about how they're
marketing themselves. You might share useful
tips and tricks. Think about the problems
your potential clients might be having and how you
can help solve them. And eventually
potential clients might find you and reach out to you directly through this platform. Picture yourself to
prospective clients. You can also just become
a one-person sales team. When you take this
approach, you straight up, research potential clients
and reach out to them and see if they'd like to work
with you. I'll be honest. This method scares me because it feels like a lot of work
for very little pay off. It takes finding
the right person at the right company
at the right time. Which is really hard. But if you think it's
a fun challenge to try to identify people
and reach out to them. Go for it, pro tip. The point of this section
is that there are many different ways
of getting clients. You don't have to
settle on a single one. Try out the tactics
I've outlined here. See if you can come up
with any others and pay attention to what works
for your project. Make a list of the top
three to five tactics you plan to use to find clients, share them with the
group if you'd like.
6. Lesson 6: The Logistics of Running a Business: Lesson six. The steps you need to take to become a full-time freelancer. The logistics of
running a business. Look into local rules
and regulations. Depending on where you live, there may be rules
and regulations about operating a
freelance business. In the US, this will often be tied to your particular
city and state. For example, I learned
that in my city, I had to first apply
for a zoning permit. Even though I dressed
work from my computer at home and don't host clients. Once I have obtained
the zoning permit, I could get my business license. The zoning permit
was a onetime thing, But the business license
needs to be renewed annually. In the US, most cities have a local government office
for small businesses. This is where you'll apply for permits and paste city
taxes if necessary. But they can also be
a great resource. They might be able to
help you with things like creating a business plan,
applying for loans, or connecting with other
small business owners, decide on the legal
structure of your company. I'm not a lawyer, so this is
not official legal advice. I just want to mention
that there are different ways to set up your company from a
legal perspective. There are advantages and
disadvantages to each. The main things you'll
want to think about are the level of risk
involved in your business, the type of legal protections
you might want or need, and the expenses involved
in each scenario. The easiest, simplest, is
to be a sole proprietor. This works if you have no other employees and means you can use your social security
number and don't need to create an employer
identification number for taxes. You can also set up
a DBA doing business as if you want your company name to be something other
than your own name, but still operate as
a sole proprietor. Other options include setting
up an LLC or an S Corp. These can involve
additional expenses, both to set up and maintain, but also potentially grant you greater protection
and tax benefits. If you're not sure which
one is right for you, or you want to explore your
options in more detail, it's best to find
a business layer and talk it over with them. A business lawyer
can also help you draw up a contract
that you can use with your clients or review any contracts that
clients ask you to sign.
7. Lesson 7: Getting Paid: Lesson seven. The steps you need
to take to become a full-time freelancer.
Getting paid. A very important part of your
business is making money. In fact, some may say it is the most important
part of your business. There are a number of ways
to charge for your work. You can charge an hourly
rate for the time you spend working on each project. You can charge a flat
rate per project. You can set up a retainer
system where you charge clients and agreed upon
amount on a recurring basis. There's no right or
wrong way to do this. It's about what works best for you and what your
clients will agree to. But no matter which
approach you choose, you'll need a way to keep track of your hours and invoices. This will become
especially important as your number of clients
and projects grows. I keep it pretty simple. The platform I use FreshBooks helps me track the time
I spend on each project, send invoices and keep
track of payments. It will show me any outstanding
are overdue invoices. So I know when I need to
follow up with clients. And it has plenty of other more advanced
features that I never use. Pro tip. As a freelancer, you will soon discover there are all
kinds of clients out there, especially when it
comes to payment. Some of them are dream
clients who will pay you the moment you
send them an invoice. Others will make
you jump through various hoops in order
to get paid on time. And some of them will consistently missed
payment deadlines. You will learn over time which clients are
the ones you want to continue working with and which ones are not
worth the headache. You might also make adjustments
to your payment terms, such as requiring half the money upfront or adding late fees
for delinquent payments. For your project. Think about what type
of payment structure or structures you'd like to use. It can be a mixed by the way. For example, you might like
to charge a flat rate for some types of projects and
an hourly rate for others. Which approach do
you prefer and why?
8. Lesson 8: Figuring out Your Finances: Lesson eight. The steps you need to take to become a full-time freelancer. Figuring out your
finances sooner or later. But sooner is better. You'll want to get your
financial setup in order so it's easier
to manage your money. I find there are a few
components that help with this. Setting up a business checking
and savings accounts. Creating a system
for setting aside a percentage of your
earnings for taxes, tracking your business expenses. Having a dedicated
business credit card, hiring an accountant
to help with taxes. You'll want to manage
the money that's coming in and going
out of your business. Setting up a business
checking account will make this much easier. I also think it's
helpful to have a business savings
account where you can set aside the percentage of your earnings that
will go towards taxes. You can check with
your bank to find out what you'll need to
set up these accounts? My bank asked for
some documentation, like my business license. It took some time to fill
out all the paperwork, but otherwise, it was a pretty
straightforward process. Tracking your
business-related expenses becomes really
important when you're a freelancer because
business expenses can help relieve
your tax burden, I E, reduce the amount
you have to pay. Some people hire a bookkeeper
to help with this, or even an external agency. But when you're first
getting started, it may not be necessary. Even though I'm not really a numbers and spreadsheet
kind of person. I find it's much
more exciting to track expenses and invest
money in my business. When I know that, it ultimately means I get to keep
more of what I earn. One thing that definitely
helps is to open a separate credit card for your business-related
expenses. Then you can look
at your statements each month and easily track
your business spending. Another point about
tracking expenses. I find it helpful to do
this on a regular cadence, so it's not overwhelming
at tax time. Again, some people
outsource this, but I find it simple
enough to just spend 15 to 20 minutes at
the midpoint and end of each month updating a Google spreadsheet
with my latest expenses. I highly recommend working with an accountant to do your taxes. They can help you identify what qualifies as a business expense. Find other ways to save you money that you may
not be aware of and calculate your estimated
quarterly payments and let you know
when to pay them.
9. Lesson 9: Get Your Website up and Running: Lesson Nine. Get your website up and running. Having a website is not an absolute necessity,
right when you start. But it can be useful, especially if you want to outline the type
of work you do. Highlight your portfolio
or examples of your work. Given overview of your pricing, and provide a way for prospective clients to
get in touch with you. My thinking is that your
first goal is to build up enough business to launch
your freelancing career, which can likely
be done based on your existing network
and word of mouth. But eventually, it will help to start thinking about where your next clients
will come from. You might not know exactly, but having a website is one
way people may come to you. A lot of people
feel like they need a super fancy or slick website, but that's really not necessary. You just want to make
it clear what you do. Provide some samples of your work and
client testimonials and give people a way to
get in touch with you. As long as you
cover those basics, you should be good
for your project. Do you already have a website for your freelance business? If so, please share
it with the group. If not, plan out the basic information you'd
like your website to include. You can share your ideas if you'd like to get
feedback from others.
10. Lesson 10: Recap : Less than ten. Recap. Congratulations. You made it to the final
lesson in this course. Here's what we've covered. Deciding if freelancing
is right for you. Exploring the pros and cons of switching from
a full-time job to freelancing and understanding
your motivation. We explored the
steps you'll need to take to get your
business up and running, including estimating your
expenses and earnings, finding clients,
managing the logistics, getting paid, figuring
out your finances, and building your
website or not. You've now got all
the key components you need to get started. I know it can be a little scary. I definitely had some fears
about messing it up somehow. But the good news is that
it's all a learning process. You absolutely have
the capacity to figure out any of the
challenges that come your way. I hope you now have
the confidence to get out there
and get started. Be sure to share
your progress with the group so we
can cheer you on. Did you enjoy this course? If so, I'd be grateful if
you could take a moment to review it to help get the word out to other
Skillshare students. Thank you so much for
your time and attention.
Melissa Suzuno, Writer, Editor, Content Marketer
