Marie is a DIY enthusiast and a self-taught woodworker. Well actually, she’s more of a DIY addict and an amateur woodworker if we’re being honest. For as long as she can remember she’s had a deep curiosity for understanding how stuff is made and figuring out how she can make it myself.

The funny thing is that I remember my brother buying me a giant toolbox one Christmas, and I wondered to myself What on earth was he thinking? But I guess he knew even before I did that one day I would have a shop full of tools.

While she wishes writing about DIY projects and making how-to YouTube videos was her full-time job, she also has a full-time career as a market researcher in the pharmaceutical industry. Marie is also passionate about cycling and hockey, but these days woodworking takes up most of her time.

Marie lives in Montreal, Canada, where she works on projects out of her small garage shop. While she’s been DIYing for a long time, Marie decided to launch diymontreal.com in August 2016 in order to share projects with other DIY enthusiasts like herself. Then, just recently in 2017, Marie started a YouTube channel.

Website: https://www.diymontreal.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/diymontreal
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diymontreal/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/diymontreal/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DIYMTL/

We’ll be talking about your story about how you started woodworking and the journey you’re taking with your YouTube channel. I always find myself relaxing at the end of the day watching DIY channels and getting inspiration from the projects that are created. I also feel that it would an interesting story to hear about how people manage and create content for YouTube as an entrepreneur.

Here are a few points that we talked about:

• Marie started her journey by starting a blog to showcase and talk about her DIY journey
• She’s been blogging for about 2 years before jumping into YouTube
• That honey-do list is a perfect opportunity to get started in DIY
• Planning, research, and figuring out “how to do this…” is a long process. Don’t rush the process!
• The beginning is the hard part – little to no traction can deter
• Instagram and sharing on social media was a turning point for Marie
• The more you share, the more you’ll position yourself as the expert in that field
• The truth is, not every project makes the cut
• Have a bank of projects that you can pull from when needed
• Start with projects that you need to be done around the house
• Monetization is different depending on the category, views, and size of your audience
  • Build your audience and you’ll find success. This can take time
• Mix up your revenue stream so you’re not relying on a single point
• Don’t do this to make money from the start
• Make this your passion and the quality will show!
• Build a process – Create a check-list of things you need to do for your projects, channel, marketing, etc. After a while, it will be second nature
• Interact with your audience on your social media platforms. Work on growing your community.
• Build that mailing list!
• Challenges are real when running a YouTube channel
  • Time is the major challenge
  • Think of the composition of the piece
  • Work on the “Beauty Shot” of the item. This will get better with more practice
• Starting off, you need…
  • to not focus on fancy camera equipment – Use your phone
  • pay attention to lighting – Use lamps, flashlights, or other sources to light up your subject
  • to use the basic video editing software until you find what you need or can upgrade
• Marie would love to eventually collaborate with other makers in the DIY space
• Marie would also like to push out more frequent projects on her channel and blog

Quick Picks

Marie

• Pixel 3 – This phone was ALMOST the upgrade phone, but have heard enough bad stories that she held off. Don’t upgrade.
• Udamey courses – Great way to learn things that you may not be aware of.

Marion

• City of Savannah, GA – Possible family trip that may be a tradition
• Spending time with family – <3

The post FHS 42 DIY YouTube Channel ft Marie of DIY Montreal appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

School Days

During my early years, I would frequently take things apart. As a curious child, you can find me behind the TV taking the phone apart because I wanted to know how it worked. I feel that at was the turning point in becoming an entrepreneur; I wanted to know how the world works! One thing at a time.

Getting candies, toys, and small trinkets is every child’s dream, and it certainly didn’t pass me by either. I started to paying attention to how much things might cost and how to then get that amount to buy my own candy and toys. I didn’t want to wait for mom or dad to reluctantly buy me something.

I raided my parent pockets for coins! I raided the seat cushions, the dresser, the cup holders in the car. I was relentless.

I saw an opportunity to help my parents just give me their spare change. To them, it was low value, but to me, it was very high value. Creating a system where they could just put their spare change in allowed me to efficiently collect them. Collecting that spare change was my goal, and I made it easy for my parents to fork it over.

High School

By my high school years, I expanded my efforts to get actual dollar bills. I started to look around the neighborhood to see what we could do as kids. Raking leave, mowing the grass, taking out trash, or whatever menial job that kids could do. I wanted to start doing that for pay because I was already doing that for my parents.

So I started going door-to-door and offering lawn service to people in the neighborhood and signing up work. From there, I would recruit my friends to work with me and split some of that profit. I would keep 60% of the payment and they would be paid out 40%. It worked well that way because I was the one finding the work, locking in the agreement, and paying out my friends.

I learned from that experience that partnering up with people and taking a smaller cut can still make you money. You don’t have to take it all on yourself and think you need to take on the world solo.

Time @ INPO

INPO stands for Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. We helped regulate the nuclear power industry here in North America. Similar to how the NRC inspects and verifies the operations of power plants, INPO does that but kicks it up a notch.

INPO was during my college internship days and I worked on the help desk. I was the first level support and picked up the phones or answered the phone calls for any problem. We were the first line of defense. Then I started to notice patterns that we were having.

From there, I trained myself to become the subject matter expert for that specific problem. With time, I became the ‘SharePoint’ guy for our 400 people strong company. I became more senior and was able to sit with Project Managers and other experts to learn how to manage projects, have conversations about the budget, and direct technology in a way to meet the goals of the project.

The employees at INPO had specific roles that they performed when they went out to inspect these power plants. You had the woman looking at the chemistry of the plant because she was the “Chemistry Woman”. The gentleman focusing on the auxiliary pumps because he was the “Pump Man”. They were very specialized…..and VERY well paid..

I learned that specializing in a specific field can help you become the expert in the room a lot quicker and command higher compensation. From observation, I realized it the power of specialization.

My First Company

When I was getting more senior at INPO, I would be approached to work on personal computers and devices. This lead me to start offering that as a service on the side to work on peoples machines.

A friend of mine at INPO was in the same boat as me. We would both be approached, but we would often share customers if we could not work on them ourselves. We also both had that entrepreneur spirit with finding and acting on opportunities if we found any. His family ran and operated a public gymnastics gym in North Georgia.

We started a company installing public access points in public locations. The first (and only) location that we were able to start with was his family gym. We had an inside track with the operating team, and installed the internet, access point, and configured everything. We then started shopping this idea around to other gyms, locations, and other public locations.

In the end, we folded the company because we realized we wanted to focus on graduating more than driving around everywhere fixing issues. This was also in the time before smart phones were super popular, so WiFi was slow and unreliable. Which was a huge headache when trying to get dozens of people on a single access point.

We both learned how to create an MVP, shop it around, and what to do WHEN things go wrong. It took a lot of patience, determination, and elbow grease to just get things started. We grew a lot while we operated that company!

Setting Out on My Own

During my time an INPO, I also started to expand my Rolodex and circle of influence. I wanted to keep people around me that I felt that I could help and grow with. I knew that I wanted to eventually work for myself and felt that keeping up with potential clients and past clients would work out in the long run.

I started moonlighting on the side and slowly built up my experience and confidence in working with strangers. I used these opportunities to start saving in my warchest for emergencies and backup income for when I DO step out on my own.

That war chest enabled me to take on more risk, be patient and picky about the clients I wanted to take on and find quality work. As I grew into freelancing, I increased my rates and kept evolving. Word of mouth and Referrals started to work for me and allowed me to step further and further into working for myself.

I fell upon a W-2 job that luckily allows me to currently work both Freelance and have clients. The catch is that that single W-2 job is good bulk of my income at the moment and that makes me worry. That is a single point of failure if I am let go.

Whats Next?

These coming years, I want to focus on diversifying my income even more. I want to make sure that I don’t have a single point that is getting me the largest ‘operational’ income. I want to ensure that the load is spread out as much as possible.

In the mean time, I am enjoying my W-2 work and I am able to balance this with my clients. I want to work on a few passive income projects, course work, products that you can purchase, and maybe additional client engagements.

We shall see what 2019 and 2020 brings!

The post FHS 41 How I Started appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

A nanny turned Melanin (dot) Tech Founder and Help Scout growth specialist, she is dedicated to showing the world that there is more to black people than what you see in the media. Chanita is committed to helping people of color earn opportunities in the tech industry and sustain long-term, rewarding careers. She is usually advocating for the advancement of diversity and inclusion, traveling the world, playing Uno or attempting to dance salsa.

Chanita’s mission is to create lasting change in the tech industry that she knows and loves. Her brand of change is focused on inspiring others to stand up for what they believe in and to never run away from something they enjoy, even if they feel as if they don’t belong.

She and her partners created Melanin.Tech to give techies of color a safe space to share stories, enhance skills, find opportunities and feel heard. Melanin.Tech host meet-ups, curate an online community, offer conference scholarship, provides job listings and sells apparel to all techies in order to amplify the importance of diversity, inclusion and belonging in the tech world.

Website:https://www.melanin.tech
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melanintech/
Blog: https://medium.com/@melanintech

Here are a few points of what we talked about:

• Chanita started off as a nanny
• Works for Growth Scout as a growth specialist
• Impostor syndrome is real and can hit harder if you are a minority
• Step up and take ownership of your career – You’ll be viewed as the expert
• You may be the only person in your organization that looks like you, but that shouldn’t stop you from BEING you
• You don’t have to be the same to be in tech
  • Be bold and be yourself! Stand out and you’ll make it farther
• Take time to invest in yourself and learn something new. You don’t have to always have a degree or be a developer to be in the tech field
• Do what you love; what you know and get experience from your journey
• Join small projects + Volunteer / Freelance forums
  • Fiverr.com
  • Upwork.com
  • etc
• Start somewhere by. Work on projects

Once you get a little experience, start flexing! It doesn’t pay to be humble.

• Going from 0 to 100 is not required. You can go from 0 to 1 and you’re still an expert
• There are always levels to what you’re an expert with
• Don’t be afraid to start!
• Technology evolves and so will you. There are so many avenues of the tech field
• Step up to challenges and ask for more if you’re already working in a tech field/company
• Don’t prioritize prestige over what fits for you
• Burn out is real and will creep up on
• Go where the people are! Make friends in the tech space and network
• Melanin.tech is striving to help build relationships
• Helping you find jobs, but with screeners to include diversity
  • Indeed
  • Zip Recruiter
  • Atlanta Tech Village
• Finding a job is a full-time job in itself, and having someone in your corner is a win-win!
• Knowing your own worth and being firm with what your requirements are powerful
• Diversity and inclusion consulting
• Build a community where you can be yourself
  • Meetup events hosted with Melanin
• HATE those “speed dating for professionals” events
• Building that relationship takes time
• Icebreakers at events help get people started
• Challenges with working from home
  • Impostor syndrome X 1,000,000
  • Fear of being fired
• Codeswitching – Change yourself to match the environment/people
• How DARE you!
  • College drop out
  • Woman
  • Woman of color
• Be yourself and you’ll be just fine! You’ll enjoy yourself and your clients can tell
• Your clients and customers can sense when you’re real and genuine
  • Reduces stress
  • Builds trust
• “Your baby is cute as a button!” vs “Wow…your baby looks JUST like you…”

People are just people. At the end of the day, we’re all talk about the same things.

• Networking does not have to be collecting a business card
• Keep the conversation going and flow with F.O.R.D.
  • Family
  • Occupation
  • Recreation
  • Dreams
• You can start the conversations
• Working at Toys-R-Us as Geoffrey the Giraffe
• Everyone should work in retail at least one sale cycle
• Be friends with your tech support department
• Face time with the different tech levels. Build that report
• Conferences and networking events
  • Afro Tech – Large conference with a diverse group of people
  • Code camp – Local Atlanta techie conference
• As you progress with your career, your roles changes
• Diversify your skills to be more independent
  • Meeting customers
  • Closing sales
  • Meeting other professionals
  • Non-tech skills; soft skills
• Sometimes you have to experience it to learn you don’t like it
• Working in South America
• You have to put some action towards your learning
• Melanin.Tech 2019 Focus
  • Career Awareness
  • Screened Job Listings
  • Building a community
  • Flat Iron Schools
  • Virtual Meetup

Quick Picks

Chanita

• Switch Yards Coworking space – Downtown co-working space
  • Dope coffee partnerships

Marion

• Savannah River Street Sweets – Local candy company in the historic section of Savannah
  • https://www.riverstreetsweets.com/

The post FHS 40 Starting in Tech ft Chanita Simms appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Malika Bowling is a digital marketer and the Editor of Roamilicious. She’s the author of Culinary Atlanta: Guide to the Best Restaurants, Markets, Breweries and More! and Food Blogging 101. She has been featured on HGTV, Chowhound, Playboy, TravelGirl and has been a contributing writer to USA Today. Malika has also served as a judge at various culinary competitions and food festivals, including Taste of Atlanta. She is also co-founder of the Association of  Bloggers.

Follow them @Roamilicious on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest for behind the scenes content. And don’t forget to subscribe to their newsletter and never miss a contest, giveaway or the latest must visit restaurant!

Website: https://roamilicious.com/
Association of Bloggers: https://associationofbloggers.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Roamilicious/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Roamilicious
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MalikaBowling
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Roamilicious

Malika is a published author, runs a lifestyle blog, and the co-founder for the Association of Bloggers. We talked about what it takes to create and run a food, travel, and lifestyle blog. Her insight into the world of media management, blogging, and PR is very impressive and it shows in how she manages her blogs.

When you’re starting your blog, focus on the “WHAT” rather than the “HOW”. Shut down that ‘analysis paralysis’ …

Here are a few points of what we talked about:

• Malika started about 10 years ago after being laid off from her job in marketing. From there, she started writing a blog.
• She started out as “date nights” and slowly morphed into reviews and photos and a lifestyle blog
• She wanted to help manage others social media and newsletters and evolved into blogging as a business
• Social media is primarily used to drive traffic to her blogs. From there, she get clients, companies, brands, etc to partner with her
• Recently changed to include travel about a year ago. Immediate feedback from locations who wanted to partner with her
• Her books!
• You grow your equipment with your business, flowers, etc
• Include multiple multi-media content into your blog
• Analytics to test and respond
• Instagram TV (IG TV) strategy for your brand. Vertical for IG TV and landscape for YouTube
• Business vs Hobby
  • Market yourself. You have to put in that effort
  • If people are included in post, use back-links, mention in post, and send a request to
  • Media kit (canva.com for inspiration or resources)
  • Consistency
• Advertisements, Affiliates, and Traffic help you build your revenues
• Influence Network helps bring traffic to you and partner with brands (https://associationofbloggers.com/)
  • PERFECT turnkey solution to match influencers with brands
• ‘Exposure Bucks’
• Association of Bloggers
  • Any level of bloggers can join the association
  • You are now part of a network that will partner you with brands
  • Exclusive resources for bloggers include help building a profile, private support group, and coaching sessions
• Is this a business or a hobby? If you want a business, treat it like a business!!
  • If you’re looking to make money, you need to invest time, energy, and money into your blog
  • You will grow there where you need to start spending money in investing in yourself
• Planning and scheduling is important!
• Be consistent with your lifestyle blog content and release!
• There is a lot of work when it comes to growing and building a blog. Partner up with other blogs and people to get help.
• Work on documenting your processes. You will grow and having things written down will be your blueprint on how to run your business
  • Helps you focus on your lifestyle blog rather than getting down in the weeds
• Tools Malika uses
  • SEM Rush – Used for Keyword advanced research and related keywords ($100/month)
  • Keywords Everywhere – Basic keyword research (Chrome extension)
  • Google Trends – Helps you find trends with relational keywords
  • Yoast SEO – WordPress blog audit for SEO (Free)
• Content with Accessibility – 2 birds with one stone that can help with SEO tactics
• Use analytics to help guide you
• Social Media Tools:
  • Hootsuite – Schedule you social media posts
  • Missing Lettrs – Pulls in content, images, and information from your existing post and creates a drip campaign on social media
  • Post Planner – Used for topic research and find content
  • IfThisThenThat – Automate your life!
• Schedules on posting content should be consistent, but you don’t have to always hit exact dates
• Be mindful of the content that you create and use. You’re content is a reflection of you and your work
• Work on your craft and don’t be afraid to approach brands you want to work with
• Weave the product into a story revolving around you
• Grow and build your network by interacting and being involved
• Focus on the social media accounts that you are more comfortable with
• People want to know what is behind the blog – People want buy from a person and not a company
• Start a newsletter and use free giveaways to entice signups – Direct funnel to your audience
• Go to events and build connections
  • Meetup.com to find like-minded people and groups
• Common mistakes when blogging 
• Crafting your message 
• Favorite places to visit (so far) 
• Income from blogging? 
• Any other topic you’d like to talk about

Quick Picks

Malika

• SnapSeed.com app lets you edit images on your phone to give your images a polished look
• Perspective change options, update color scale, make colors pop!

Marion

• Goodreads.com Book Challenge
• Goodreads is a digital library of what you’ve read or want to read. Get recommendations from other people and can connect to your Amazon.com and Audible.com accounts

The post FHS 38 Lifestyle Blogs ft Malika Bowling appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Make sure you CAN

When you work for an employer, you usually sign agreements stating that you’ll do X, Y, and Z for that company. One of those agreements may be to
take on side work or projects outside of the scope of your existing day job. Make sure you CAN work on side projects and moonlight by going over your agreements that you signed.

You don’t to put yourself in a position where all your hard work could get you in trouble with your current employer. MOST companies wouldn’t care what you’re doing in your off time. As long as you don’t compete with them.

Do Not Compete

The biggest no-no that you can do when starting to Moonlight is to start competing with your employer. This can land you in a WORLD of trouble.

When you are finding clients, make sure they are not clients you are taking away from your existing employers. You are being paid to be your employer’s resource and they’re not going to be too keen on you taking their clients. Do not work on the clock when you are supposed to be working with your employer. This is basic wage theft and can face jail time…

If you offer the same services that your employer does, then you’re just asking for trouble. Don’t poach or skim work from your main job and take it for yourself. You more than likely signed a non-compete or something stating that you won’t take work from your employer. Your services should compliment or gap-fill what your employer cant do.

Make a Deal with your Employer

If you feel comfortable approaching your employer to work on the side, by all means do it. Pay attention to the workload that your employer is having and offer to offset some of the tasks that are normally going to contractors, consultants, or outside help. You may be able to work after hours as a contractor yourself for the same company.

There is nothing wrong with approaching your employer with a proposal for alterations to your time or your total compensation.

Time – You can ask for more time for yourself to work on your moonlighting jobs. Make a deal with your employer about the number of hours you are working on your main job. Be upfront with them and ask for a few hours a week to work on your own stuff. It doesn’t hurt to request this as part of your compensation package.

Ask to have a few hours to yourself on a Friday in exchange for additional hours during the other days of the week. Ask to have every 3rd Monday off to attend community events. Ask to leave work early on Tuesdays if you can come in earlier on Wednesday because you’ve got a product to deliver. You have the ability to present options to your employer that benefits both parties.

Total Compensation – Your total compensation could be lowered if you negotiate for increase time to work on your own business in exchange. You have the power to ask for the rights to work on client work outside of your regular job if your job doesn’t normally allow it. Propose a lowered compensation package if they waive that limitation.

Work under a Brand vs your Name

If you are feeling iffy about stepping out while you’re also working for someone else, consider working under a brand instead of your real name. Your employer may have a stronger indication that you’re stepping out if you promote under your own name versus a company name.

You will get to a level where you’re needing to promote yourself as the expert in your field and using your company as a front-man/woman may not cut it anymore. Your clients are going to see you as another employee or help instead of the expert who can give them a return on their investment.

Start with working under a company name, then look into promoting work and being seen as the actual expert.

Finding Work

In Episode 2, we chatted about finding and researching potential clients.

http://www.Reddit.com

Reddit is a forum style website that has millions of users and thousands of communities. One of these communities are going to be exactly your client base. On Reddit’s homepage in the upper right corner, you can search for what’s called subreddits. These are the specific communities where your clients and customers live. For example, if you were a web developer who works with non-profit animal shelters, you would want to more than likely search for the ‘animal shelter’ subreddit. Within a few days or hours of using Reddit, you’re be able to identify at least 3-5 subreddits that focus on your niche. This may be one of the easiest places you’ll use when finding and researching your customers.

http://www.meetup.com

Meetup.com is a site that lists communities that line up with who your customers are. You can even find people who have similar tastes, ideas, or industries. Let’s say you’re that web developer that wants to find non-profit animal shelters. You could search “animal adoption drives” or “animal lovers of Atlanta” to find people who have similar interests. Then you can hone in on where and when they congregate. There are dozens of topics or groups or industries that meet all over the world and the States.

http://www.LinkedIn.com

You can think of LinkedIn as a social network for professionals. You can join specific communities within LinkedIn, connect with similar professionals, or target specific people in specific companies. LinkedIn has a very extensive search option that lets you find almost exactly who you’re looking for. You can pay for their premium level account and open up even more options for finding that specific client or audience. 

Other locations where you’re going to find customers include…

• http://www.hunter.io Hunter.io is a researching site that lets you know emails of companies. If you already have a name of someone in a company, you can grab their email address.
• http://www.slack.com – You can join a Slack channel specific to your targeted industry and jump in on the conversation
• https://angel.co/job-collections/remote – A job listing of startup companies looking for help
• Referrals – If you’ve already worked for/with (including professors) someone TELL them that you’d love for them to refer you in the future. Be specific about what type of client you’d like to be referred to.
• Networking Face-to-Face – Go to free trade shows or join an organization that has your target clients. It’s gonna take some practice doing face-to-face conversations, so don’t feel like you’ve failed your first time out.
• Guest Posts – Contact blogs that you follow and offer to guest post. It’s a win-win for both as you get to show what you can do and they get additional content. Finding and researching your customers may become easier after guest posting because they will start coming to you.
• Contact people/organizations/business direct – Use LinkedIn to search for people in a particular field or matches your criteria. Use your local Chamber of Commerce to find companies in your area or demographics. Heck, even looking at Google search results for contact information may work.

When to Make the Switch

Only you can really decide when to make that switch over. A good rule of thumb would be to wait until you have about 3-6 months of your income in a war chest before you step out. Having that safety net can sometimes make a difference in how you pursue and take on work.

Stepping out on your own is a big step and moonlighting is that slow and steady pace that can get you going to 100% self employed. Build up your Rolodex of customers/clients while you’re working for someone. Start small and you’ll grow big!

The post FHS 37 How to Moonlight appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Where to Start

Most freelancers or entrepreneur start off as moonlighters working on side projects. You can transition into a full-time endeavor when you’re ready to take the plunge. “When” is always up to you, but starting a business may not be as hard as you think. Keeping the business running and operating is the real challenge. But we’ll get to that part soon enough. For now, let’s take things one step at a time. No matter what type of business you want to start, you will need these basic 6 steps.

1. Research your customers
2. Register yourself
3. Taxes and finance
4. Get online
5. Marketing
6. Getting help

When you’re just starting out and wondering where to start, your mind is full of tons of ideas that you just want to get out there and hit the ground running. But hold up a minute, we need to start planning this out. We’ll first need to find out who our customers are. We need to research our customers and do what is called “market research”.

1. Who, specifically, are you going to be facing (niche)
2. What is the problem that you’re hearing the most often
3. What are they willing to pay
4. Is it sustainable
5. Where do they hang out

Finding your customers, what their pain-points, and understanding the value of your services is going to give you that head start that you’re looking for.

After you’ve got a grasp on who and where your clients are. You’re ready to make things legal with your state, federal, and the IRS. Register yourself will help keep them off your back so you can make transactions happen without having to worry about Uncle Sam.

I have an interview with a CPA about taxes and registering with the IRS to keep them off your back. Check out FHS 3: http://freelancerheadstart.com/llc-vs-s-corp-and-the-tax-man/

During the registration process, you’re able to also get yourself a bank account. You need to keep your personal and business money separate, so go ahead and take care of that now.

Once you’re good and registered with a shiny new bank account, you can move onto getting an online presence. The world is smaller than you think and getting online will help you reach all corners of the earth. Grab yourself a domain name and host to do it yourself or purchase a pre-made package. A better and ideal way would be to hire a professional to take care of and grow your online presence while you work on your business.

When you’ve got a place to shuffle clients to see what you’re about, online marketing can help you gain even more traction. You’ll be able to focus your sales funnel, track engagement, and carry clients through your pipeline. As a result, you’ll be able to have a steady flow of potential clients.

And finally, when you’re look for where to start, always ask for help. Don’t be shy to talk to people about what your idea is or what your planning on doing. Make friends in your industry, reach out to Meetup groups, engage in forums and blogs, and generally “show up”. You’ll be surprised at how many people are going to be willing to help you through your tough times. The second pair of eyes and ears can bring about a new perspective on what you’re trying to do!

How to Get Clients

Finding and getting clients is one of the most common challenge for freelancers and entrepreneurs. There really isn’t a secret to finding clients, you have to put in some social effort and go where they are! To find clients, you need to have something that someone needs and be willing to pay for it. The easiest way to get a client is to show them how you are going to better that client from where they are now. They are essentially investing in what you have to offer to help them 2x, 10x, or 20x their returns.

In order to get your clients rolling in, you first need to work on your client profile. You need to be able to pick your client type, industry, and budget level out of a lineup. If you don’t know who your target client is, you’ll be shouting into the void hoping someone will stop by. Finish this sentence, then you’ll be ready to begin finding and winning clients

“I help __________ to __(single group of people)__ who have a yearly profit of _____________”

What you’re doing is making it easier for you to combine your services or products with the companies or people out there. Finally you can start using that to start looking for clients with laser focus.

Common places to find clients includes

• Job Boards
• Conferences
• Chatroom
• Face-to-face networking events
• Cold calls
• Cold emails
• Yellow Pages

If you’re like me, you want to maximize your exposure to potential clients and not a huge fan of shaking hands and kissing babies. Well, there are a lot of online sources where you can find GREAT clients and start to work on your sales funnel. Here is a rundown list of where to find clients and jobs online that I’ve used in the past:

1. Authentic Jobs
2. Behance Jobs
3. Craigslist
4. Drupal Jobs
5. LeadPages Jobs
6. Reddit /r/forhire
7. Smashing Jobs
8. Stack Overflow Jobs
9. We Work Remotely
10. WordPress Jobs

Once you’ve identified your niche, your client profile, and potentially where they’re hanging out, you’ll be able to create a proper sales/client funnel. Where to start is becoming more clearer.

Basic Funnel

Here are the steps that you’ll need to do EVERY DAY to keep your pipeline steady. Take at least an hour:

1. Visit each site above and filter to find projects.
   1. Subscribe to RSS feed or email to get listings automatically
2. Bookmark or note at least 5 potential
3. Research each lead
   1. Carefully read the description – understand the goal of the work
   2. Research the contact person and company. Learn their products, competitors, etc.
4. Contact the lead through email
   1. User verbiage that quick, short, and to the point. Don’t come off as sleazy, rude, or know-it-all. Keep it casual.
   2. Include information that you researched
   3. Include a simple call-to-action that lets you know they might be interested
5. Followup with the sent email at least twice, per listing. Once every week.

That’s a basic sales cycle for cold-emails, but it will help get your pipeline steady with potential clients who may need your services. The pattern is similar if you meet people face to face or on the phone. Don’t think you have to stick to one type of client outreach. You can use combinations if you’re comfortable.

Validate an Idea

So you’ve got a big idea or service that you think will change the world, but you don’t know if it will fly or where to start. Do NOT pursue an idea or product unless you have a little glimpse of proof that you wont be wasting time or money. Sometimes the market is not ready, sometimes you may need to tweak something, sometimes you’ll find something WAY better. Validate your ideas or products with market research. A little goes a long way!

Market Research is a technique you can use to validate your idea. Market research also will help you find that group of people that your product may be interesting to. You can break market research (finding and researching your customers) into two sub tasks; finding customers and reaching customers.

You’re going to want to do what is called “market research” to help validate your idea

1. Who, specifically, are you going to be facing (niche, market, clients, customers)
2. What is the problem that you’re hearing the most often
3. What are they willing to pay
4. Is it sustainable
5. Where do they hang out

I talk with Patrick Selby about how he focused on the “What” with a few pointers and what he learned from his mistakes. Check out FHS 19: http://freelancerheadstart.com/fhs-19-market-research-building-product/

Additional Sources

• http://www.reddit.com Sub-Reddits specific to your industry
• https://stackexchange.com/ – A list of communities where people ask specific questions. Perfect for collecting common, popular, and hot problems.
• https://feedly.com/i/welcome – Feedly is an aggregator of websites that funnels everything into a single dashboard. You can subscribe to a bunch of websites that give you up to date content that you can consume in a single location. You will get a better understanding of what is commonly being said across your industry.
• Mailing list – Create or join a mailing list to collectively gather people who will be your potential clients/customers. You can then interact with this gold mine to get ideas or questions answered.
• Conferences/Tradeshows – You can’t beat the ‘heard it from the horse’s mouth’ effect. Hit the pavement and attend shows or conferences that are specific to your niche. You’ll be able to rub elbows with your clients and get a direct quote of what their problems may be.

I would honestly spend about 40-60 hours of effort to find and research your  customers. If you can understand what your audience is thinking, what their pains are, and a way to help, you’re ready to position yourself as the expert!

Running your Business

Running your business day in and day out may be the easier part of being a Freelancer or Entrepreneur. You’ll get into the rhythm of things and do a lot of your processes automatically. You’ll also get to a point where you can use tools to help take care of the lower-hanging fruit for you. Such as your invoicing, email marketing, contacts, client on-boarding, and other task.

The main rule for being self employed: 1/2 your week is finding clients/work and business admin tasks…the other half is active work

Don’t think that you’re going to be up to the ceiling in client work. You have to keep your machine running and clients coming in. You have to make sure the bills are literally paid, your emails are sent, and your plants are watered. This goes outside of physical client work and we sometimes forget that part of working for ourselves.

Plan your day (or week) where you work on your business and yourself. Don’t overestimate the amount of work you’ll need for client work and pace yourself.

Don’t Forget about Yourself

When you start down the road of actually servicing clients and producing contents or widgets, you’ll slowly start to forget to work on yourself. We get caught up in servicing our clients and customers with 100% of our efforts, we don’t think we need the same amount of effort or services for ourselves. We think that since we’re the experts, we don’t need our own help.

Candace Schilling and I chat about ‘minding your own business’ and working on ourselves. Check out FHS 24: http://freelancerheadstart.com/fhs-24-minding-your-own-business-ft-candace-schilling/

When I, myself, was starting out I slowly noticed that I was polishing my clients websites more than myself. I was putting it a lot more effort into their content and website rather than my own….. We’re the experts but sometimes we need to look internally at our business or ourselves to make sure that we’re using our own talents. We sometimes forget that WE are the experts! Don’t forget to turn our own skills on ourselves

Take a Time Out

Leave time in the week and the day for yourself. Unwind and de-compress. Your business is mostly you and its WILL suffer if you overwork yourself. Make it a priority to take an hour a day to do nothing. Have lunch outside of your work area. Go see a movie. Walk in the park. Play a level of your fave video game. Whatever it takes, make sure you pause your work day. Where to start will depend on your personality, but allot time out of your day to take a breath.

Use tools to your advantage

It’s 2018….don’t fight the digital age! Adopt a few and simple tools that are going to make your everyday work easier. Since we’re in the digital age, we’re also able to work online with most of our content and tools. Here are the two main tools that I use almost daily to run my business:

Dropbox – Free for 2GB. Up to 1TB of space on paid plan

Dropbox is a dynamic synchronizing file stored on your devices. It automatically back things up to the cloud and allows you the ability to access the files and content from anywhere you want or need with your freelancer tools.

Dropbox is my main work space because it allows me grab files, share content, and move things around multiple machines whenever i need. I also use Dropbox to allow my clients a quick and easy way to send me files if needed.

Check it out here: https://db.tt/i1gKYQepsg [Referral/affiliate link]

Get Harvest – http://try.hrv.st/1-294321 (Free for 2 project OR $130/year for unlimited)

Harvest is my go-to for invoicing. It definitely pays for itself with your first client. You can send out an invoice and give the option of 2 payment routes: PayPal or Stripe. Invoices get sent electronically either with a PDF, link, or an email where the clients can pay online directly. You get reporting on who is late and who paid on time. The invoices also have automatic reminders that are sent out at specific intervals.

You can also use Harvest to keep track of time to bill hourly (which is what I use daily), keep track of projects, and keep track of expenses. Reporting is not bad. It won’t tell you categories in your spending like Mint does, but it will let you know if you’ll be pretty close to blowing your budget out the water in overspending. If you have a team of more than one person, you can also keep track of spending and income per-person or per project.

Conclusion

Working for yourself is a fun and exciting challenge and is full of different paths on where to start. You’re the boss and you make all the decisions…good or bad. It may not all be roses and peaches at the end of the rainbow, but for most, its SO worth it! This shouldn’t discourage you from starting down the path of becoming self employed.

To sum it up, these are the 6 starting points when you wanna work for yourself and where to start.

1. Research your customers
2. Register yourself
3. Taxes and finance
4. Get online
5. Marketing
6. Getting help

Don’t think your idea or product is stupid one. You never know what you’re going to find with market research and validation.

Start by finding clients online and create a basic sales funnel. From there, you can refine what works for you and where your niche clients are hanging out.

Take time out of the day and week to take care of yourself and that business admin work. There are tons of tools out there that you can use to make your day-to-day easier. Don’t push yourself to the limits and burn out. Its too easy to do that in the beginning.

And lastly, don’t forget to work on your own business! We sometimes forget that we need our own help. Take a look at your own processes and look for ways to improve or change it.

Once you go down the route of becoming your own boss, yes, you’ll com across a lot of obstacles. But I promise you that it only looks like a mountain from where you’re standing. Take that first step and you’ll realize you’re only on a small hill.

The post FHS 32 Where to Start appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Your Income is Variable

Generally speaking, the effort that you put into your business is the income that you will see. Your income is totally dependent on a lot of different aspects of your business and the major piece is YOU. You are the driving force behind the $$ that you bring in. If you don’t work, you don’t paid.

This is detached from the 9-5 day job where you get paid on a 2 week cycle, especially if you’re salaried. You already know what your income is going to be every 2 weeks. With a consulting or freelancing job, you have to go after that $, that income, that client, that project.

Your income is actually variable. Some months you make little to no money while the next month you make three times your normal amount. But over the course of the year, your income is looking pretty good on paper.

You can mitigate the variable income by changing the strategy on how you get paid, such as being on retainer. You can have a SaS product or a productized service that you can sell regularly. Maybe even advertising revenue from your website that you’ve already built..

You Have to Make the Decisions

Another gotchas of Freelancing and Consulting is that you’re the one in charge and you have to live with the consequences. You cant sit around and just let someone else take the wheel…and the blame… You may be stuck in that impostor syndrome cycle where you feel that you can never get anything accomplished. You actually have decision that could effect you negatively or positively. Heading down the route of market research can definitely help you make that decision if you want to go down this route long term.

You Are On Your Own

You are a one-man-band, for the most part. When you’re starting out, you’re by yourself. You need to be accountable for your own self, your action, and your decisions. When a decision is made, you don’t have anyone behind you telling you its good or bad. This can be GREAT if you need to just get things done….or it can backfire if you’re the type that needs validation.

Build a community around you can help mitigate some of the “Im alone” situations and help you move through ideas, decisions, or points in your product.

It can get lonely working by yourself and can drive you crazy! Break up your routine every once in a while and go out to eat lunch with a friend. Visit a relative you haven’t seen in a while. Go hang out at a co-working space. Get out of the house and socialize so you don’t start to become that ‘weird freelance guy…(or gal)…’.

Tough Skin

A common gotchas of Freelancing and Consulting is the need to have tough skin. Sometimes things don’t go your way and you need to not take things personally. People will let you down, clients will lie, vendors will fall through, and life will become real. This will not always be the case every time, but you need to know how to handle situations as they arise and keep moving.

You’ll get to a point where people keep telling you “no” and you’re going to face adversity. Don’t forget there is always something better on the other side.

Getting through 50 ‘no’ to that one makes all the difference!

Self Starter

There is no-one really behind you. Becoming a self starter requires you to have that effort behind you to get going to get started. You don’t have anyone watching over your shoulder to make sure you’re doing what you’re suppose to be doing (and honestly that feels GREAT most of the time). But this can also give you that false sense of being lost and don’t know where or when to begin.

Don’t forget, you ARE the expert here. You ARE the one who is kicking butt and taking names.

Start small and snowball into being better at becoming a self starter! No-one will be there to tell you to start; you have to actually start.

Easy to Overwork/Burnout

Another gotchas of Freelancing and Consulting is that is pretty easy to get overworked and burn yourself out. Burning the candle on both ends maybe something that you’re use to doing on a 9 to 5…but when you’re on your own, that’s the quickest way to burn out. Just because you CAN stay up until 3 am every night working on your product or project doesn’t mean that it won’t catch up with you shortly. Set boundaries with yourself and your work to make sure you don’t go down the path of burnout and being overworked.

You quality of work will suffer and will show. Set limitations, goals, and boundaries with your clients and with yourself. ‘Mind Your Own Business‘ and work on yourself. Set policies and procedures on yourself and your business where you do slow down and stop overworking.

Know your limits because you can easily push over. You are NOT going to catch up on sleep this weekend….

Time Management

Because you are by yourself, you definitely need to work on your time management skills. You need to have some sort of system to manage your time. There are only 2,000 work hours a year. Which boils down to 40 hours a week. In reality, you’re only going to be getting about 20 hours a week on billable hours. The rest of the week, you need to do all the administrative work that comes to running a business.

This can include answering emails, checking the mail, filling out your taxes, doctors appointments, etc. Set yourself on a schedule where you can time-box “work work” and stick to it! You can gain a better understanding on how long it takes you to do things which will then translate into billing clients.

The quality of your work will actually show if you’re not rushing to cram a day in.

What Vacation?

When you’re working a 9 to 5, your vacation times and days allowed are almost a given. You’re awarded roughly 2 weeks of time off that you can completely disconnect from work and do what you want to do: relax! When you’re working for yourself, your time away from your baby can lose you money. You’re not 100% autonomous (yet) and still need to have a few ‘check ups’ to make sure everything is ok. This could be checking emails really quick and only replying to important ones or making sure that launch went smoothly.

The gotchas of Freelancing and Consulting are that vacations are a luxury where you can have 100% relaxation. We have to plan for this a lot further and harder than a traditional 9 to 5.

The post FHS 27 Gotchas of Freelancing and Consulting appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

The first (and often missed) crucial step to proper goal setting is to make sure that your goals are well thought out. A lot of people approach goal setting with a general idea of what they’d like to accomplish and consider this ‘good enough’. This does not count as setting a goal; you’re having a ‘wishful thinking’ moment.

Each goal needs to have a plan on how you’re going to achieve the goal and what ‘success’ will look like. One of my favorite method in creating and achieving goals is the S.M.A.R.T. method.   

Specific: The more specific and detailed your goal is, the more likely you are to achieve it. Write down your specific goals and make them visible! Seeing your goals on paper will help you subtly keep that goal in your mind. Remember, out of sight, out of mind.

Measurable: The more you are able to track progress, the more likely you are to succeed. How do you know where you stand if you do not know your starting point or where you currently are? Take stock of what your current situation is and have a metric that you can measure against. Let’s say you have 2 clients right now and you want to get 2 additional clients. THAT is a measurable goal.

‘I want to have more free time’ is also measurable. Keep track of your current free time and go from there. The point is to ensure that your goals have a “right now” and a “Where i want to be” number.

Attainable: Make sure that the goal you are setting is realistic to where you are starting and attainable. Every single person starts from the bottom. No-one starts off being #1 right out of the gate.

Make sure your measurable goals are realistic and attainable. Saying that, don’t be shy to push yourself a little.

Relevant: How relevant is this goal? Setting relevant goals will help keep you inspired and on track to reach your immediate and your long term goals. This also helps you to think deeply about what you are doing and if it is keeping you focused on your own personal ‘bigger picture’.

Building that momentum to achieve your goal is very easy in the beginning. Keeping it going is going to be the hard part! Create a goal that will contribute to your larger goal to keep yourself moving.  

Timely: Setting time limits helps maintain focus on the plan ahead and keeps you motivated and inspired to stay on track. Create small milestones for yourself that helps you gauge the progress on your goal!

Include rewards for reaching minor and major milestones as well. Everyone loves prizes, why not give yourself one for doing an awesome job?

Don’t set goals that are extremely far away or long. Break them down into attainable and smaller goals to keep that momentum going. Want to make 6 figures in your business? Start with 3 figures first then build up! Your accomplishments will seem like a piece of cake and you’ll be able to level up in no time.

Don’t forget, be real with yourself. Don’t create goals that are too far fetched or unrealistic. At the same time, you need to stretch yourself and push yourself to do the best you can.

You can always adjust and adapt your goals to changes of real life! No-one said that your goals are set in stone and CANNOT be changed. No-on said that you can change your goal marker of success. Do what you need to do to ensure that you’re winning!

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

The post FHS 14: A Goal Without a Plan is Just a Wish appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Adam Saltsman

Adam is game developer, game publisher, and family man who is known for his addicting games. He is the force behind the game Canabalt and along with his wife Bekah the game studio Finji. Their newest games from Finji are Tunic, Night in the Woods, and Overland.

Twitter: @ADAMATOMIC

Website: http://www.finji.co/

In the Beginning

• First freelance gig was Flight Simulator X
  • Found from friend of a friend
  • Building models
• Building portfolio from T-Mobile games
• Difficult to make living from just art and focused on “turn key” game making service
• Cheaper to hire someone to create a game for larger corporation/organizations
• Stumbling into niche and noticing patterns

Work on your Portfolio

• Fill portfolio with work you’re going after!
• If you don’t have existing clients, create internal portfolio projects
• Plan for the long-term with your portfolio
• Try to take on opportunities that come your way

Work on things that benefit you long term

• Find the balance working on your portfolio as well as finding clients
• Nights and weekends may be something you’ll have to do short term
• Look ahead to see what you’re working on now to get the clients you want
• You get a lot of experience from practicing and failing
• Rates should be able to cover the overhead of working for yourself
• Pivot and level up when you feel that you’ve plateaued

Not all Red Flags are from your clients

• Learn what your ‘Red Flags’ are for your clients
• You’ll have to set time aside for your company as well as your clients
• Don’t take on more work than you reasonable can do
• Don’t forget about your own company

Client Red Flags

• “Weasel Detectors” to sniff out the wrong clients
• Do they know what they’re actually doing?
• Get to ‘no’ as quickly as possible
• Micromanagement
• With experience, you’ll notice flags quicker

Vetting Customers/Clients can help you reduce headaches

• Poke the client with small push-backs to see how they respond
• Understanding how the clients work will come easier with experience
• Challenge ideas
• Don’t forget, you’re the expert THEY hired
• Receptive clients are much more fun to work with
• There isn’t a magic formula for the perfect customer
• Sometimes you have to vet the customer longer than you normally do (Old Spice)

Dikembe Mutombo and Old Spice game

Success takes work

• Instagram filter doesn’t show the effort it took to get that one shot
• Short term sacrifice
• Working for exposure…no thanks
• Not everything you do will be in exchange for money. And sometimes that’s ok

Build in time for your company road map

• Build time within your week to make sure you’re on track
• Work on yourself as well as your project
• Are your projects stagnant and on track?
• Are you doing what you really want to do?
• The quality of your output will greatly increase

Keep an eye on your goals

• Company goals
• Personal goals
• Retirement goals
• Quarterly Check-Ins

‘Dark Side’ of working for yourself

• In the US, a lot of moving parts that you may not know about
• It IS doable, but you have to keep it in mind
• Healthcare, taxes, and filing are part of your responsibilities
• Research and organize your own retirement and healthcare
• You WILL do better and understand how to run a business
• You may have to take gigs to fill the gap when needed
• Time it takes to get paid can be a pain
• Time management!

Be an effective contractor

• Your goal is to get as few jobs that you can
• Quality over quantity
• Don’t just pile it on!
• Refer other people that you trust if you need to pass on a gig

Learned on-the-way skills

• Learn how to communicate
• Pitching ideas that almost re-states what the problem is
• Give context and justification for the pitch
• Gains peoples by-ins and get them on your side
• Repeating their problems back to them as conclusions
• Sometimes you’re hired to fall on the sword, unfortunately
• Being sensitive to the environment you’re working in
• People may hire you and still do it their way
• Channels of communication may need to be ‘off the record’

Community Outreach and Help/Share Knowledge

• Adam and his studio love helping people who want the help
• Finji.co blog has a lot of behind the scenes and studio information
• YouTube talks about game dev
• Email contact button on Finji.co or adam@finji.co

Quick Picks

• Google Pixel orders come with the Google Mini
  • Fluid commands
  • Google Ecosystem intergration pretty easy
• ‘Hackingtosh’ – PC built to run Mac-OS
  • Pain to get setup
  • Impressive once completed
  • Normal PC equipment with Mac Pro performance

The post FHS 12: Freelancing and Building a Game Studio ft Adam Saltsman appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.

Know what you’re good at

• Are there a lot of people looking for your skill
• What are the skills that contractors get hired for in your field
• What can you do differently?

How much risk are you willing to take

• The most risk-averse you are, the more of a runway you should create before making that jump
• Build up that client base
• Moonlight gigs to start building that warchest

Be honest with yourself

• Freelancing and becoming an entrepreneur takes effort that some may not want to do
• There is nothing wrong with working for another company

“Plan B”

• My ‘Plan B’ was to work for someone else….I was already doing my fallback plan
• You wont know your success unless you try

Calculate how much you need to live per month

• Rent
• Food
• Utilities

Warchest

• Grab about 4-6 months of savings to help make the plunge easier
• If you don’t succeed, you have something to fall back on

Know your worth in your field

Glassdoor.com

• Research companies based on position, location, and average page
• Find out what people in your field are making
• Look up similar positions you’re attempting to go for

Payscale.com

• Find out how much you are worth
• What skills are worth in the market you’re attempting to go into

Comparably.com

• Find your ideal company and compensation range
• Local and nationwide
• Find what others are being paid to help you gauge your worth

The post FHS 11: When to Take the Plunge appeared first on The Freelancer Head Start.