Everyone has their own path when it comes to freelancing and entrepreneurship. Your path is going to be unique from mine and others. In this episode, I wanted to share my own journey with how I became a freelancer and entrepreneur.
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!