WE MOVED!

WE MOVED to a new site – please follow us to

www.blogatwork.com

Getting into freelancing the wrong way around with success

I don’t know how others do it – most of successful contractors won’t tell you the truth, they’ll tell you a story that goes along with a public idea of how “it should be”.  Those who didn’t succeed won’t tell you the truth either – mostly because they don’t talk about the freelancing past or can’t face the truth of their failings and blame superior forces. All I can tell you is how I did it.

As a child I had an inclination for giving things a go. My first entrepreneurial experience was at the age of four. I was selling a leave that felt off the tree to people passing by the block of flats where we lived in Moscow. My price was one rouble and a neighbour’s kid offered to pay 50 kopeikas (half the price) I agreed and took the money. Well, nearly – my mother stopped me at the last moment – private business was not allowed in the 70s Moscow… We will never know what a retail empire died there on the spot.

I didn’t know what was going on until I was deep in it. Four month into my first project I realised that what I was doing was that self-employed freelancing contract thing… And looking back I’ve done pretty well, though most of the time in a completely reversed way to the common sense advice of freelancing sites!
It started in tears…in a lot of tears – I was quitting my job at a world-known bank because I could not get along with my manager and it felt like I will never ever, ever get another job… ever! I didn’t have a new job lined up; the only one I’ve applied for after handing in my notice was given to an internal candidate.

Yes, it was a very pleasant sunny April month that year but a vacation is only a vacation if it has a pre-determined end date. Anything else is not relaxing at all… not for me at least.

I was three days unemployed by the time I decided to check my e-mail box. There was an email from one of the job boards I’ve subscribed to. I never saw anything of any use for me there before as it was quite a “techie” site and I refused to go back to my SAP past! This time around there was an agency looking for a contractor to write a training strategy for an implementation in one of the Big 4s for three months. I’ve submitted my CV and went shopping. Within ten minutes my telephone rung and an agent on the other end wanted to know how much I would charge per day.

Now, when you are preparing to become a freelancer you probably will visit all the clever websites and use calculators to estimate how much you should charge, you may read all sorts of advice on how to determine your rate – good on you! I’ve had no clue!

All I could say was “I don’t know – it’s your lucky day – you tell me how much you want to earn selling me to your client”. Five minutes later I new my market rate, and it was good… very good indeed.
The rest was easy and exciting! I was told to set up my own company so I spent a day contemplating about the name and remembering my inclination to branch out into different areas decided to give it a nothing meaning name, so I “can sell onions under the same name if I wish” was my justification.
I had one really big advantage that made all the difference – my management consulting past with one of the Big 4s. The client interview, my settling in into a project team full of strangers with a strong corporate culture was nothing unusual, it actually felt quite familiar and reassuring.
The biggest drawback I’ve experienced from the very beginning was my professional loneliness … No trusted colleagues in the back office, no data base full of someone else’s knowledge to fall back onto… Whatever the client asked for had to come from my own experience, from my own hard drive and it had to be fast.

I spent some time creating my own web presence (that never has seen the world though) because I did not want to be a “contractor” – I did not want to be a body that is being passed on from client to client, someone who gets exploited to the maximum for the knowledge one has without any re-investment to build up more skills (it took a while to understand that part of my daily rate was to cover any courses I would’ve chosen to take).
Slowly I’ve learned to enjoy being a contractor with an agency. It felt so familiar to my consulting past, just with more money and less supervision. All I had to do was to issue an invoice on a weekly base – believe you me, it’s still the best part of the week, those sweet minutes of printing and signing!

Well, everything must come to an end, and so I am finishing my first contract in a week’s time. After nearly two years I am leaving my client for good … I am about to become a mom.
And you know what’s the best thing is? I’ve earned enough money to keep me home for the next ten months so that I can come up and implement a new idea that will earn enough for me and my little family; a smart enough idea to allow me working from home and enjoying the undivided responsibility that comes with any form of self-employment…

Determine your price

 Freelancing site and blog

Worldwide freelance projects (from IT to transalation)
UK Contractor’s site that I used
UK Contractor’s market trends

 
Wealth of information for new contractors in UK

To be or not to be a freelancer?

 

Is there any difference between being employed and self-employed? Wouldn’t you say “yes, there is”?! … I wouldn’t.

Why?
Well, you see, positives and negatives of both options are pretty much one and the same thing, though they may appear different on the surface.

How’s that?
Let’s think about the most common argument people use to persuade us that freelancing is an attractive option – money! Compared like for like a self-employed web designer may earn over 100% more than an employed one. Though somehow it escapes us that self-employed earnings are pre-tax, pre-medical insurance, pre-holiday and days off sick, and it already includes spending on training courses, membership and accountant fees. When I do this sobering math my freelance earnings suddenly look more like just “quite a good wage”. Of course as an independent consultant I could opt out of the medical insurance, do the books myself and not be a member of any professional organisation as well as drop my indemnity insurance – I could! But shouldn’t we be comparing like for like?

Now, how about the freedom and the flexibility? Choosing what and when you do?
Just between us – if you know there is such an opportunity somewhere there in the world of freelancing, tell me – I will apply! Or even better, don’t tell anyone – grab it yourself, quickly!

Truth is – when you are employed you have co-workers whom you can help to develop professionally (read – give them stuff you don’t like); when you are a contractor in the same office – you are the one given things to do no one else wants or knows how to! And as for the flexibility – this moody creature is greedy and coldly calculating – the moment your finances start feeling tight, squeezed or just not opulent enough the flexibility turns its back on you and demands obedience to the first job that comes your way… Doesn’t matter how boring, tiring or far away from home it might be. And the worst thing is – you can’t even moan about it!

Why would you want to become self-employed at all?
There is this scent of a constant challenge and opportunity in the air of freelancing. The notion of unlimited possibilities and chances if you would just dare to grab them. It is very appealing and sexy – a little bit like an ad that promises you that you can be earning millions soon, like Joe Block who’s pictured on that ad, did. And you fall for this promise and you give it a go and most likely you stick to it for a while because it’s fun.In the long run and I mean the whole 20-30 years you end up working/earning money, I think you should try both options and mix them depending on your personal circumstances and the state of the market. To pepper this up I would also suggest to venture at least once or twice into the world of entrepreneurs, business owners and employers.

 Give it a go!

 

No clue – no problem: how doing the right thing is killing you

You rememeber we’ve published three posts to explain in detail how using NLP Timeline technique can make your whole life and career a much more pleasant experience? Yesterday I read a great article that summs all the advantages up,   Jonathan calls it “following unstream”.

Doing things just because “they work” is the safest way to get no where. Trying to live up to other peoples’ expectations and follow someone elses plan, because it worked for them – won’t do you any good. It did not work for me sofar, though I really did try hard, honestly!

Jonathan’s advice that I wholeheartedly share

If you’re off the beaten path, you may be lonely. But that’s a good thing. Because when you know you’re treading uncharted waters, you’re following the compass of your heart.

What do you think? When has creating your own path and taking more risks than the mainstream worked out for you?

Read more here from Jonathan

It ain’t gonna help anyway!

I was reading through the blogs on career and job advice recently and nearly all of them had at least one post about what to do if you are unemployed… Each would suggest a bit of a different approach to handle your situation but on the whole they sooner or later list options available as next steps. I fell into the same trap and a short while ago published an article coming up with some options as well…

I don’t’ believe that the people looking for advice on what to do next will suddenly realise that all they were missing was just a bit of help to find the right idea, that they actually didn’t know what options are out there before they read any of the current articles… So why are we still looking for help and answers to the “What should I do now” question, even though we are aware of options available to us with our particular skills, experience and constraints?

I think we are asking the wrong question! That’s why the answer “do this – do that” is not satisfying. What we actually want to know is “What should I do next that would guarantee me a better outcome then the one I’ve already got?” We are looking for an instant solution that will take away our fear of uncertainty and unpredictability… We think that if we go freelancing, buy a franchise, move abroad – anything at all – the pain will go… But if you would be ready to change your career, to become self-employed, to go back to the university you would’ve done it already anyway! Or you would be in the process of doing it right now, motivated and even encouraged by the recent sack…

And the rest of us – we don’t need those lists of options and links to “how make money fast” sites, what we need is psychological pampering, we need someone who can take care of us at this moment, we want someone to tell us that “it will be ok!” and you know what? – it will be ok… for most of us, it will. How many people do you personally know who never ever again got a job after they’ve been sacked during hard economic times?

You just lost your job? – Fill your time with tasks you enjoy, something that keeps your day structured and organised, provides routine. Wait until the pain and guilt subside. Then look around and read those “these are your options” articles if you wish, and thereafter – follow any advice you like – they are all the same in so far that they will all yield results, they all will make you pro-active, you will be doing something, they will give you back the feeling of control – loss of control is exactly what made redundancy so painful! So all you need is to get it back – that easy…!

Don’t you agree?

 

 

New Year’s resolution: get made redundant!

I came across a very reassuring article that I felt like sharing with you!

Couple of days ago I was talking about how we could approach being made redundant, how it makes us feel and what opportunities it may bring us. The article in the Observer sums it up! My quote for the coming months from that article will be the one from David Kuo

It is the job that’s being made redundant, not you.

Jon Robins interviewed people in their 40s and 50s who were laid off recently. So what do others do when it happens to them?

–         Become an entrepreneur

–         Move abroad and start a new life

–         Get a job in another country

–         Get to know your family (for the workaholics amongst us)

–         Learn something you always wanted to know about

BUT – ask for the voluntary redundancy package – it will bring you much more than just the statutory payment (worth not more than a couple of weeks wage at its best).

All those great things you could do if they would let you go – but would you really dare? Or is just all talk, talk, talk and an attempt to make one feel better?