Freelancing. The smartest Way to be free and highly Paid

Chapter 1
Who are the freelancers

Most likely, you have already read about it somewhere. So I put it briefly. In the medieval centuries, this was the name of the helpers to the spearmen, the knights. Those who carried their weapons. Lance is a spear. According to Wikipedia, the term became widely used after publishing of the novel by Walter Scott “Ivanhoe”. The most striking example from classical literature is Sancho Panza in “Don Quixote”. However, Cervantes wrote about this even back there in the 17th century.

It doesn’t matter how or when the term first appeared. The more important issue is what does it define now.

It does define people who can work for multiple employers and are not tied up to each of them by longterm obligations.

A freelancer is a person who offers their services to employers without being employed by them. Which services?

This can be writing texts, design, page makeup, search for personnel, training, programming, translation, photo and video shooting, website creation, mailings, typing, information collection, accounting, legal services. This can be absolutely any work related to mental labor.

What kind of freelancer services do I order myself? These are website promotion, corporate souvenir design, makeup of handouts for seminars and trainings, making of presentations, design of publications for Instagram, layouts of my books, creating covers, designing my YouTube channel and its content promotion, translation of my books to other languages, creation of illustrations for books.

In other words, I am a fairly regular customer for freelancers.

Let’s take a look what are the advantages of working as a freelancer.

Independence

There are several nuances here. Independence from the office. No office squabbles and unnecessary talks. Freelancer is paid for the result. And he doesn’t have to attend meetings and other get-togethers; he does his job. He focuses on it and dedicates time to it. This increases productivity.

Independence from one employer. He has several of them. If something happened to one – closing, or delays, or a change in policy for example – he can switch to the others. Employees who work for one employer are more at risk.

You have a mortgage and loans, and you get a salary from one company. If something happens to it, this may be crucial for you and your family. And if there are 10 employers, this doesn’t mean much, right?

I have a cousin Vadim. He has been working at customs for more than 15 years.

We rarely meet – about once every 3 years. One day he asked me a question: “How do I make way to commercial structures»? «Why? – I asked. – You serve to the state, have a guaranteed salary on time, you have status, shoulder straps, career promotion.»

The answer surprised me: «We are unstable. Nobody knows what the state will introduce tomorrow and what new rules will be.»

I was in shock. I was sure that civil servants are confident in the future and trust the employer. But it prooved to be false. Well, we had a talk and a discussin; I suggested him options and introduced to the local business community. Nothing has changed.

Although he is not happy with the work, he remains there, at customs. Does it malke sense for me to influence it? No. Changes is a matter of independent choice.

I can help you change only if you’ve already decided that this is necessary for you.

What else can I say about independence? Here goes independent of the location. In most cases, mental work can be done from anywhere in the world.

What about independence of the work schedule? You are doing a job by the right deadline, not just working from 9 to 18.

Independent of the tasks. Yes, this is also interesting and unusual in the beginning.

Could I realy do this way?

If you work in an office, you have to implement all the tasks that your boss gave you. Working for yourself, you can choose projects, tasks, customers, and partners. You can easily refuse the work that is not interesting for you it is not profitable.

Since I’m an entrepreneur, for me the possibility to choose who I’m willing to work with is one of the main values.

A freelancer is in fact an entrepreneur, who works for himself and his family.

So what else can we do besides being independent!?

Saving time on the road

You don’t need to spend a couple of hours on the road and in traffic jams every day.

But! If you flew to Bali, then 11 hours of flight to Denpasar we will not consider a waste of time on the road, okay?

More time with your family and friends

You need to work. But you don’t have to rush to the office at 9:00. You can take the kids to kindergarten and school in the morning, and meet them after. Even if you are busy at home, then your homies see you and it makes them feel good. This is much better than staying late at work.

As a father of five children I know this, and it has been tested by personal experience and two divorces.

Ready to start freelancing? Doesn’t it sound great and inspiring?

What about the cons?

Yes, there are several. Let’s get into this.

At first glance, the most difficult thing is sales. Say, you used to do the design in the company, receiving technical specifications, implementing it, approving it with the internal customer. But now you have to start from finding the customer. Then agree on working conditions, sign off the specifications, get prepared, agree on the contract and sign it off, complete the work, sign the act of acceptance… Possibly to do the job of a courier and bring documents in person or send them by mail, then get paid, then pay taxes…

Isn’t it easier to work for hire?

Organizational, legal, and accounting issues look intimidating only at first glance. I know people who are afraid to start their own business because of the fact that they did not know how to solve all the bureaucratic issues. Even in 2019, one fellow admitted that he was afraid to start business because he didn’t know how to organize «protection». The guy is under 30. In the «dashing 90’s», he wasn’t even born. Why the fear of bandits, protection, kickbacks? Perhaps from parents or from internet tabloids?

Let’s talk about my experience. I started my company in 2000.

And initially everything was outsourced. Legal services – such as company registration, account opening, contracts with customers and employees. Accounting services – such as reporting, taxes. The only thing I did myself was signing payment orders. Yes.

There were times when you had to do it by hand and then take it to the bank by feet. Now I make payments to clients using my mobile phone’s Face ID. What bank do I use? The «Tochka» bank. I do recommend it to you.

Subscribe to its founder’s Facebook. His name is Boris Diakonov.

Creating corporate identity, business card design, website and office design, IT-administration, document delivery – all this was done by external contractors – companies, or individuals. They weren’t called freelancers then, but in fact they were freelancers. Now these tasks can be solved remotely, even the system administrator can be located in an other city.

In other words, my company only had recruiters on staff. All functions, except recruitment, were given to external contractors.

Now it is much easier to get income officially and pay taxes. In Russia, there is a special status of «self-employed». You pay 6 % tax on income received form corporate entities and only 4 % when payment is received from individuals. Everything is automated, Both from the point of view of registration and taxes. Physically you don’t have to go anywhere at all. In Europe, America, and Asia, there are similar rules, but taxes are higher there.

Let’s go back to the cons.

1. There’s a need to search for customers. This means – to sell. And this is loved not by all of us. As for me, I like to sell. I like to get into the problems and tasks of customers and offer solutions. And to bill, of course.

2. Income may be unstable. You have customers today – but tomorrow you don’t. This will be discussed in the following chapters. There are lifehacks and rules for this.

3. You have no social guarantees. Do you believe in them at all? Now you are your own guarantor of income and expenses. Saving and investing just 10 % of the income, you can save a decent amount over a few years. If you haven’t done financial planning before, here’s the reason to start.

4. Self-motivation and discipline. Previously, it was possible to obtain the «magic-kick-in-the-ass» from the management. Now you’ll have to do it yourself.

5. Vacation. Previously, you could relax 100 % during your vacation. In freelancing, on the one hand, you can arrange vacation at any time, on the other – now you have it unpaid and, if the financial reserve is small, you will have to get to work even when on vacation.

6. Psychological reluctance to work independently. This is partially connected to paragraph 4. This is essential difference between freelancers and employees on the company’s staff who work remotely. If you are on the company’s staff and work at home, you still have a boss, colleagues, common chats, intranet, meetings. And a stable salary. A freelancer doesn’t have that. Socialization is necessary for most people. Well, only if you’re not a 100 % introvert who sits in the office with headphones on and tries not to talk to anyone without a strong need.

7. Risks of non-payment from the customer. You’ve done the job, but the customer haven’t accepted it. Or he has accepted, but refused to pay.

And you can’t go to his office. He’s in another city, or maybe even in another country.

It is necessary to understand that for the employer working with you looks like risky.

What can this mean?

1. He can’t control every day whether you ‹ve been implementing the job for him or not. And he ordered it from you; this means, he needs it to be done by the deadline. A freelancer may get sick or get distracted from the job by personal problems. By outsourcing of the same task to a company, the customer avoids such risks, since the executor can pass the task to an other employee.

2. A freelancer may refuse the implementation of the projects agreed upon before, especially when getting a more profitable order. There is a risk for the customer not to get the result at all.

3. When passing the project for implementation, the employer can share confidential information about the company’s past and even its strategic plans. For example, if you are an accountant, a marketer, or analyst on freelance. Companies who are afraid of these risks, they commit the freelancers only the simplest work. And they may be blackmailed by unscrupulous freelancers.

4. The quality of implementation and communication. If the company has common understanding of the rules for preparing documents, their transmission, discussion, approval, and everyone is OK with the rules, the freelancer just can’t take all the nuances into account while working simultaneously with a dozens of customers. This may cause conflicts or disruptions in order execution.

And the advantages for the customer are even more significant!

1. The most important thing is that the thing for what you pay is the result, not the process. The customer does not care if you spent 1 hour on the task or 10 hours. He pays for the service implemented. This is not the same in case of office workers. According to statistics, an employee spends 2.5–3 hours out of 8 directly performing their duties. The rest of the time he wastes on meetings, breaks, coffee, chatting with colleagues.

2. The job of a freelancer is usually cheaper than the same service order from the company or employment of an employee in the staff.

3. The customer may obtain an expertise absent within the company. And even international specialists, who may not be present not only in their city, but in the whole country.

Isn’t it cool?

4. There are no costs for equipping the working places, buying software, and other resources.

5. Substantial savings in the salary. Vacation and sick leave are not paid. And when signing contract with the self-employed, you pay no taxes.

6. The opportunity to finish the cooperation at any time, without big sanctions and payoffs, which is impossible while dealing with the employed staff.

7. The opportunity to experiment with different performers, and choose the best for your longterm cooperation.

If you are reading this book and are not a freelancer, but an employer, think about which of your tasks can be passed to freelance today.

If you are a freelancer, before moving on to the next chapter, answer a few questions in writing.

Having studied the pros and cons of freelancing, what do I think? Is this for me?

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What exactly attracts me to freelancing? What’s still stopping?

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Do I want to obtain new experience?

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Rank the power of your desire on a scale from 0 to 10

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Customer’s opinion

Ekaterina Skrypnik, Group of companies (GC) “Business information systems”

GC “Business information systems” is engaged in implementation of complex projects at the junction of IT technologies, reengineering of business processes and a narrow subject matter. We have long experience of working with freelancers. Freelancing pros are the first we turn to in case of need. These are people who are have expertise in some narrow subject area (for example, a specialist in extracting of the results of intellectual activity from a content, a specialist in deep machine learning, specialist in management of organizational changes, etc.), and they are also people who do something very well: designers, copywriters, layout designers, business event hosts, etc.

We create a database of proven freelancers for ourselves and try to re-contact those with whom we have already worked together.

How do we choose freelancers? Upon the recommendation. We never compromise on the compensation for professionals. For us the guarantees that the work will be done on time and efficiently are much more valuable than saving of 15–20 %.

Where do we look for freelancers?

The easiest thing is to publish the call on Facebook – and you very quickly get contacts of people who do something well.

You can also search for particular specialists in professional communities, groups on Facebook and on Telegram.

The only way to control the quality of a freelancer’s work if you have agreed on organizing of a digital space for work and iterative approach to the acceptance of the implemented work.

That’s exactly what we do. We sign off a contract with every freelancer, and a specification and a work schedule are attached to the contract. We suggest to work on the basis of our IT infrastructure (if it is possible), to track the progress in real time mode.

Of course, we have encountered poor-quality work – we update a black list of unskilled and undisciplined freelancers we have worked with and we don’t want to deal with anymore. And here is the most difficult thing: since you can claim to refund the advance payment while working with a company, and apply penalties for violating the requirements for the quality of work and the calendar plan, it is much more difficult to call an unscrupulous freelancer to account. Keep this in mind when making the final decision.

If you want to progress in IT business and offer your service to our company as a freelancer, then visit our website and contact us on https://company-dis.ru/

Customer’s opinion

Maria Rybina, product owner of the “City business school” international business school

I’ve been working remotely myself since 2014, so searching online and interacting with contractors that I’ve never seen it in my life is my usual working routine.

Sometimes it is simply impossible to meet in person, especially if you are separated by a distance of thousands of kilometers.

This was the case with one of our freelance workers named Dasha. A Muscovite, she worked at an office and did not even think about remote cooperation. Then she married to an engineer working in the oil industry. His contract with the company dictated relocation every three years. Young family moved from Moscow to Paris, and then to the Arab Emirates.

Of course, there was no “normal work” for Dasha there.

The only option was to search for SMM work remotely. In one of the chats for freelancers, she saw our ad about a position for a specialist and left a request.

We needed someone for a short-term project. The meeting was held online: in the process of communication, we realized that the person understands marketing and specifics of promotional work. Dasha did some work on influencers marketing for us, and then revealed another strong point of herself: she perfectly structures the work and clearly tracks all stages of the process, quickly responding to changes that this is especially important for project collaboration.

The work was built Google documents with weekly planning meetups in the online conference mode. So the personal presence was not required, the main thing was the stable Internet. At the beginning of the collaboration Dasha was still living in Paris, but even her relocation and adaptation in a new country did not affect the implementation of work duties. In addition, she would inspire the team with sharing her window view from the phone and stories “from the inside” about the culture of another country. So she fitted the team perfectly.

Our project collaboration has grown into a permanent one. We already successfully completed the project that initially had been a cause for our cooperation, and then the next one. And Dasha is still in the team, already on a permanent basis. During this time, she has mastered a new front of work and even hired an assistant, having taught her also remotely and thus strengthening our team with a new qualified employee.

The success of our joint work and Dashas’s growth from a freelancer to permanent employee of the company became possible due to her responsible approach to work and our experience of management in remote mode, good communication and proper control of a remote team environment and relationships in the team.

Remote work has its own nuances, regardless of whether you are looking for a one-time remote employment, or a project or a permanent collaboration. We here in the company “City Business School”, being the leaders of the remote education market, have collected best practices and experience of remote work and put in the basis of a special training course on building the remote teams.

Find out more and leave a request for training on our website: www.e-mba.ru

Exclusively for this book’s readers we suggest a promo code “Ilgiz” for 30 % discount on remote management programs.

Personal experience

Violetta Grishina, YouTuber

My name is Violetta Grishina. For the last year on remote mode I earned more than in all 10 years of working in my own business, in the office, and on television…

My first salary was approximately $100 a month for work as a TV host. First big income from renting an apartment in the age of 18 years came up to $1500 for a couple of days of work. There were earnings of $7000, but all this was not systematic and would occur from time to time.

I could earn S7000 for selling a house, but then would not get a penny for six months, or I could earn just $300–400 from rent every month, spending all my time on work. This was a good aid for a full-time student. But it is not something that gives stability and confidence in the future.

Over the past year, my monthly income has become more stable: $5000 or more a month, and all this while sitting at home with a newborn daughter. And most importantly, I have a vector for development and growth, the income is growing and will continue to grow, and my personal participation in the operational routine is becoming less and less.

Over the past year, I have fulfilled a dream that I would postpone earlier due to lack of time and money: I have spent 2 months by the sea with my family and grandmother, a month in Turkey and a month in Thailand.

And also 3 months on the Baltic coast. I would walk with the child for 2–3 hours every day and was by her 24 hours a day, while remaining in demand as a professional; met new like-minded people, worked with TV stars and even started sharing my experience on educational forums, which also began to bring money. I created my own video course, trained several people in my team, and worked with people who are freelancers like me, who I have never seen with my eyes. Am I a freelancer? Maybe, but only in terms of being free of bounds to certain locations.

Otherwise, this is a business and a system that had to be built.

Now 80 % of my clients are people I’ve never met in life.

All our communication takes place only in messengers and look las follows: we call or write off, I tell about my services, we make an agreement, discuss the details and get to work: the contract, the payment, and the fulfillment of obligations. I get hired, I attract other freelancers, companies, and remote workers – my team to give the result. In fact, I’m a manager who gives the result.

I can do all this from a warm bed at home, on the beach, or in the gym.

What do I do? I produce YouTube projects. What it all started from? From working on TV for most of my adult life.

Later, with the appearance of the YouTube, I realized that my competence may come in handy. First requests for videos appeared on the Internet, and projects became larger and more interesting, the tasks bigger and broader; I had to expand my own competence in the field of digital marketing, and master advertising accounts. Everything I couldn’t do on my own, was performed by other people: I searched for them on websites, by networking, by recommendations. I had to heavily dump the first year, to gain experience. I gave almost everything I earned to contractors, made mistakes, and paid out of my pocket to fix them. The client would receive what was promised, at all my costs; most often it costed everything you earned. Over time, you gain experience, learn from mistakes, acquire a team of reliable freelancers and do your job so good that the client is happy and willing to pay money for your professionalism. In fact, I have a business with the same risks and obligations; just it happened so that my entire team sits not in the office, but somewhere on the remote and all our communication takes place via task boards and messengers. The only one minus is that most freelancers work as individuals and you have to transfer the payment to their bank card account; and when it comes to accepting money, I use the accounts of my legal entity. I pay taxes and put their cost in the final price. In the same way I have also an accountant on the remote, a lawyer, operators, editors, assistants, designers, web masters, targetologists, specialists in video advertising, excellent marketers, etc.

 

And for any task, I know how to find a person who will do well.

And my clients come mostly on recommendations. And I have my reputation to keep. And, by the way, I know that I will probably go to work in an office one day, but definitely not because of some despair, but only for the sake of interesting and large-scale projects.

And my team will tirelessly do tasks for my clients, create and promote YouTube channels and raise the check for professionalism.

Personal experience

Anton Veselov, Deputy director state public scientific technical library Russian Academy of Science

While I was working in the socio-political newspaper “Honest word”, I had an “upscale” freelance – in the newspaper “Kommersant-Siberia”. When I finally got hired in the staff of the main business publication of the region, additional working hours have become the main incentive for self-improvement. I worked part-time in the capital’s edition “Outdoor advertising” and learned the basics of advertising campaigns, worked in the “Tourist newspaper” and trained my desire to travel around the world (and soon these wishes had to be fulfilled).

Later, when I came to work for Rossiya-24 TV channel as a producer and a host, it seemed that all my professional dreams had come true, and I should be more modest. But, my large family constantly needed money. And first of all, I didn’t have enough “cross-pollination” with a new “parallel” case. And I settled in the Institute of communication to establish communication, reform the website and photograph the main actors of the educational process. Looking ahead, I will say that now I am a member of the Novosibirsk regional branch of the Union of photo artists of Russia; I scrutinize other people’s websites, I am always ready to participate in branding, naming, and launching new electronic representations. But this was not enough. In parallel with television and higher education, I became an editor-in-chief of the business gloss “Status”. I had to rush around the city in my car, having just a couple of hours a day to support the workflow on each “additional” field. De jure I performed fulltime duties everywhere. The magazine was a star at the time, and the Institute’s marketing strategy showed strong tectonic shifts. As for my work on television, the final Saturday show and the daily five-hour “live” newscasts still seem exemplary to me.

After joining the largest library in Siberia as Deputy Director for public relations, I took on the heavy burden of all the publicity of the State Public Scientific Technical Library of the RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE.

To ensure a presence of at least 50,000 people for mass events, I had to learn to be creative around the clock, inventing popular science shows, music and theater projects, organizing significant exhibition and educational projects. This work weirdly combined the functions of an official representative of a Federal institution in government bodies (you have to be “in full parade” in the city hall and the government every other day), and a gallery owner (literally, I would hang pictures myself), a screenwriter and organizer of festivals for 10 thousand people, a host of events with the participation of scientists, the Mayor and Governor, and a press Secretary of the libraries. Otherwise, who else will write press releases and be the “talking head” for the press?! The work is fussy, but rewarding. And the body requires something else!

Years of “multi-stop” training do not allow you to be idle. Fulfilling my vow to the God of journalism, I continue to write texts: not only about the library, but also about artists, theater figures, and entrepreneurs. In need of a “TV drug”, I run my own TV program called “My people”, and every Sunday my half-hour premiere interview airs on. For a whole year out of these three, I hosted a radio show with the frivolous title “Connection. With Anton Veselov.”

On the live broadcast every Saturday would come the mighty ones of this world. And all this was interspersed with music.

Another “place of force “ is the host’s chair. I manage large forums and “closed” round tables. My credo is a neighborhood with the major representatives of government and business. This is not just how I earn money (although sometimes this area of activity feeds me literally gorgeously), and also it trains my social skills and gives me a reason to” dive to the bottom “ in the twists and turns of the forest industry, in the innovations of design or, let’s say, to penetrate the depth of understanding of the world business.

I am afraid that the most memorable event took place when I was freelancing: a dive into the deepest mine in Eurasia in Norilsk, participation in the EU-Russia summit, and the corporate book “ Tomsk oil” with a visit to the fields and refineries of the Tomsk region, a special project about Norilsk Nickel Plant, launch of the Snow Forum by pushing an Ice Button, or art objects auction in the “Pobeda” cinema. I can’t complain: I found myself in these “additional” cases, having left the engineering profession and “diving” into journalism, PR and event management.