Want to work online as a location independent freelancer? I got you!
This solo episode shares my proven template for launching a freelance career, remotely. Work from home or live like a Digital Nomad - this episode contains zero fluff.
Takeaways include:
Additional Links:
About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
Want to work online as a location independent freelancer? I got you!
This solo episode shares my proven template for launching a freelance career, remotely. Work from home or live like a Digital Nomad - this episode contains zero fluff.
Takeaways include:
Additional Links:
About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
Someone who gives me a freelance opportunity. That's flexible. I can work on my own time from anywhere in the world. At my rate We feel like we're asking for a favor that this lifestyle is so great I'm so lucky that someone is allowing me to be a freelancer for their company that is wrong. Hey, freedom seekers. You are listening to episode 50, one of the freedom lifestyle podcast. Thanks so much for tuning into another one. This is going to be a solo episode from yours, truly your house Sam and the topic is how to become a remote freelancer. This is going to be a little bit of a workshop style episode, where I'm going to share my proven step by step process for starting out as a freelancer who wants to be able to offer your services remotely from anywhere in the world? I say proven because one, I have been freelancing remotely. Now for over three years, I'm loving it. And I have no intentions of stopping too. I'm also responsible for a lot of people, quitting their jobs and pursuing this lifestyle as well. It's a lot of pressure. But it is working for them. And I'm very confident in the advice I can now offer to you in how to get started. This episode today was actually inspired by a video I created this week. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen the, how to I G T V videos that I've been creating lately. The first one was about how to monetize a podcast, how you can actually make money as a podcaster. My second video was about how you can record a high quality podcast, right from home. Like I'm literally doing right now. And these are videos that I've been creating as part of a paid partnership with a company called jump rope, jump rope is an app, and I fricking love it. If you are a creator of any kind, you need to check this out. Basically what it allows you to do is right from your phone, you can shoot, edit and create step-by-step how to videos that you can in one click automatically resize the video for YouTube IETV Instagram stories. It even turns it into a visual image for Pinterest. It's such a cool app, and I really love the team. So this is the paid partnership that I've been doing. I just finished my first month and I have three months. So if you have ideas for other how to videos that you'd like me to create, or even on the podcast, please. Send me a DM on Instagram, or shoot me an email. You can find all my contact information on what's your free.com. So as part of my partnership with jump rope, I'm creating these how to videos. And this week I created one on how to become a remote freelancer. And then I was thinking, okay, well, what should my podcast episode be this week? I knew it was a solo episode. I. I knew I wanted to teach something and pass on some advice and some lessons. And I think as a creator, we put so much pressure on ourselves to always be creating new, always be innovating, always be doing something different. But if we look at what some of the best and most successful creators are doing, and you take a page from Gary V's book, it's really about how you can turn one piece of content, one piece of thought leadership content that you're proud of into multiple forms of content. So rather than creating a totally new podcast episode today, I just said, why don't I create the same concept, friends that, of having it in a video form and also create it on my podcast. So real estate right now. And you're like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Sam. I would much rather watch a video of you talking about how to become a remote freelancer. No problem. Download the jump rope app. It's on. The Google app store or the Apple app store, you can find it it's free. You can discover a lots of other how to videos and you can watch it right there. If you want to listen to an audio form, then sit back because this is going to be a good one. Before we hop into it, though, let's hear from one of our very own freedom seekers.
do you want to get a free ad for your business on season four of the freedom lifestyle podcast while I've totally got you in an effort to support more small businesses during COVID-19 I'm offering a new free podcast ad stimulus. Program simply go to what's. Your free.com/free ad and upload a 22nd audio ad for your business. You may just hear it on next week's episode.
Sam Laliberte:Before we get too deep into how to become a remote freelancer. let's go through an exercise to make sure the freelance life is for you. I'm going to share some pros and cons things. I've truly learned myself and heard from many other freelancers in my network of. things that they struggled with and ways that they thrived. If you hear this list and you're like, Oh no, I, that doesn't sound like it's for me, but you still want to be location independent. Don't worry. I'm going to give you two alternatives to becoming a freelancer who still wants to be able to order online. The pros of the freelance life. As a freelancer, you are your own boss. You are self employed. You get to decide your working hours, where you work from how much you get paid. When you take vacation, you don't need to ask anyone's permission to go on vacation or let anybody know you have full autonomy. You also have the flexibility to take on any projects you want. You're allowed to have multiple gigs and contracts at one time. Where you going to be exploring a lot of different passions of yours and working on various projects, you don't need anyone's permission. Unlike when you work for a company more often than not, you have to make sure it's okay with your boss, that you take on additional side work and freelance contracts. But as a freelancer, you get to make all those decisions for yourself. And I find that to be a huge perk. As part of that, you're not part of one team, which this either resonates with you or it doesn't. But often, I find that when you have a team and you're working 40 plus hours a week together, there can be some office politics or drama. And as a freelancer, you don't get involved in any of those distractions. you get the best of both worlds. Another great thing as a freelancer is you are considered self-employed, which has a ton of tax benefits, which. I could probably be an episode on its own and I probably don't have the right credentials to talk to you about tax advice. But from my personal experience, being able to expense all kinds of my regular work from home expenses, like part of my rent, my cell phone bill. If I take online courses. if I go out for different meals or travel for business, all of that can be written off, which means that you get to pay less taxes. I think this is a huge perk of freelance versus full time employment. And it's one of the biggest benefits that I have. So definitely on the pros list, what are the cons though, of becoming a freelancer? Because it's definitely not for everyone. And as I said, if you hear this and you're like this isn't for me, don't worry. I'm going to give. you two alternatives. The cons is that it's not very stable and secure income. I'll be real with you. The point of it being a freelance contract is that the employer can terminate it at any time. They can literally just decide without cause that they do not want to continue the contract and your employment with them would then be terminated. So for that reason, you have to be okay with that. You have to either have some type of cushion or always be exploring what other types of opportunities might be out there. Business development, networking, exploring projects, making connections is part of it. So you have to enjoy that aspect and have to be okay with knowing that you have to essentially hunt for work on a, on a pretty regular basis. Another con with the freelance life is that, especially if you're a remote freelancer where you're working online and you're not going into an office, it can feel pretty isolating at times, especially if you're a freelancer for a company that has full time employees who are on premise on site, there might be things that you just don't get invited to, that you see online, or you hear them talking about maybe they're making companies sweaters and they don't think to buy you on. It could be something small like that. or it could be something bigger. Like they're having a company retreat and you wouldn't get the invite to that, or really what can honestly bother me the most is when you're working on projects and you just miss out on details, you don't have as much influence on the team because you're not there working with the boss on a regular basis. So you're not always first to know about what's happening and you can often be playing catch up and things can be changing without you being privy to it. So those really are the challenges with being a freelancer. This. is why I really like to work with remote companies where everyone's kind of on the same playing field. And there's less of that, advantage that you get by being in the office versus other people. So those are some of the pros and cons. If you heard this and you thought, okay, that's definitely not for me. I'm someone who really needs stability and security in my life. I have a mortgage, I have bills to pay. I have an expensive lifestyle. I have a family, honestly, no judgment, whatever the reason is, I totally get that. The good news is, is that you can become a remote worker, which means you work full time for company, but still have that location, independent lifestyle. they even better news? Is that because of COVID this is pretty much the preference for a lot of companies. So remote work is thriving right now. If you want that stability, I would really recommend you going on websites like remote work.io. We work remotely work you and look at different job postings for remote jobs. A lot of people I realized don't even know that remote job postings exist. So you can definitely pursue the remote worker path. This episode is. Going to be focused on freelance though. So I'm not going to go into that too much further if you heard that and you thought it's still not enough autonomy for you. Maybe you don't want to work on a variety of projects. Maybe you want to like really bring something to life and you really want to be your own boss. Then perhaps entrepreneurship is for you and you can still be location independent as an entrepreneur, as long as you set your business up that way. So you want to be creating products and services that are digital, that can be Stud and created and sent from anywhere in the world. I pursued this path as well. In addition to freelance, I have passive products. I have my online course. I have the LDR activity book with Jared. these are examples of how you can still be an entrepreneur. Be your own boss and not have that contractor freelance life. If you decide that isn't for you. If you heard that list and you're like, yeah, Sam, I know what freelances, I want to be a freelancer. That's why I'm listening to this episode. Let's go, we're a few minutes in. Let's get right into it. The first thing you'll need to do is identify what skills you have that you can monetize in the freelance world. Something that I did that I recommend to a lot of people is do some research on freelance marketplaces and see what types of. Services other freelancers are offering. I love fiverr.com. You've heard me talk about their platform a lot on this podcast. There's also a website called upwork.com and you can go on these marketplaces as if you're a buyer and you can see what are the types of gigs. That's what they're called on Fiverr that freelancers are offering. You can also see how much people are charging for it, and even better pro tip, as you can see, which ones are the most in demand by looking at how many reviews. A freelancer has, if you see people, have a ton of more reviews in a certain category that could signal to you, like, Hey, this is something I know how to do that I could get paid for. You'd be surprised how many skills you have that can actually be monetized in a freelance capacity. And when you're just starting out as a freelancer, it's less about, following your passion, at least for me at the beginning, it's about just building your confidence that this can be a sustainable lifestyle for you. And knowing that you can pivot along the way. In my first year freelance, I did so many different jobs and I'm so glad I spent that year doing tons of different stuff. Because it reminded me what I like to do, not what I can get paid to do, but at the beginning we want to identify what can I get paid to do as a freelancer remotely. So go on these websites, make a list of five to 10 skills you have that you can monetize as a freelancer. If you go through this process and you just think I don't have enough skills, that's actually not a problem at all. Upskilling is totally a thing. And in a way, I almost think it can be an advantage. When I think about the freelance services I'm offering right now that are my most lucrative and the ones I enjoy the most there's skills that I recently learned. I offer affiliate marketing services. I run influencer marketing campaigns for company. These are very cutting edge new strategies that I learned to do recently. And I actually think that gives you an edge against other freelancers because there's less competition in that space. It's also less likely that a company would have a All time staff member that already knows how to do that. So don't be scared about the fact that you need to learn something new and up-skill, I actually think it can work in your advantage if you decide, Hey, I want to learn something new and bring that into the freelance marketplace. I love online courses. It aligns very well with the freedom lifestyle, location, independence. You can take these courses online from anywhere on demand at your own pace. So I really recommend that you do that Or learn. They have an entire marketplace now of online courses. And what's super cool about what they're doing is the courses are all content that you would then learn and ideally then sell yourself. You would learn that skill and then sell that service on their platform. That's how they're looping it all together. And that's their strategy that they've shared with me. So all the courses on there are things you could then offer in a freelance capacity. Other platforms. I really like, are you, to me, that's actually where I took my course on how to create an online course, very meta, but I found that course on Udemy and I loved the instructor so much that I invited her to be on the podcast. You might remember Louise Croft, digital nomad girl. I interviewed her on season three of the podcast. All about creating online courses. her course was totally amazing. I loved it and I found it on you to me. So I definitely recommend that platform as well. And one that I recently discovered is called tablet wise. They're, co-founder actually reached out to me this week and we had a call. They want me to start selling my podcasting course on their platform. They seem to be pretty new and up and coming, but they have some great instructors and lots of great courses. So I encourage you to check out tablet wise as well for your upscaling. Once you have the skills that, you know, you want to monetize and are ready, it's time to find your first couple of customers. When you're thinking about this approach, I really recommend a dual approach. One that would be taking advantage of freelance marketplaces, but also at the same time, pitching businesses and asking for work. Let's start with joining these marketplaces. This would look like creating a profile on fiverr.com. There's also freelancer.com. I mentioned Upwork. All of these are marketplaces that literally get millions of views. Every single month of people that are looking to buy freelance services. People who have money, who either don't have the time or don't have the expertise to fulfill a project and they want to hire freelancers remotely at the price that they set. To fulfill that role. It sounds amazing. Right? So you definitely want to make a profile on those platforms, but remember that it takes some time to build your credibility and be successful on those platforms. I actually learned this because next week's episode, spoiler, I interviewed an Epic human. His name is Damiano. And our entire interview is all about how to be very successful as a freelancer on a platform like Fiverr. I'll quickly just tell you about that episode and then we'll move on. But basically what damn yanno did his three years ago, he created a gig on Fiverr. He was selling websites. He will create a website for you on Shopify for X amount. And three years later, he has a full blown agency and employees 35 remote workers. He's a very successful company. This year alone. He said, he's doing a quarter of a million dollars just on fiber. Okay. That's not accounting for the business he's bringing in outside of it. So he had a lot to teach me in the episode, that's coming out next week, about how these algorithms work. So a couple things he mentioned to me is that basically these platforms will make your profile show up higher based on a few things. One is how many reviews you get, right? So the more customers you start getting, the more reviews you'll get the more five stars I know you'll get, and then that'll improve your searchability and your ranking. Another thing that he told me is that it's based on your response time. how quickly do you respond to people who reach out to you? Do you fulfill all the things that you said you were going to do? So it's gonna take some time for you to really find success on these platforms. I don't want you to get discouraged, so I'm going to be real with you on that, create the profiles, but we're also gonna talk about how you can actually go ask for work. We know that 80% of jobs are not advertised. Okay. This is called the hidden job market. I learned this when I was working at the student success center, it was one of my first jobs. When I went to Western university, it was my student job. I worked at the front desk and at the career center, students can go to all different free info sessions and workshops, and we had a job posting site and I learnt a lot about how a lot of jobs are never even posted well, When you're talking about freelance work, that 80% it gets even higher. in my experience. More often than not these companies I work for are creating jobs for me because they want to work with me. So after I've built that relationship, let them know I'm available. We are exploring a project and they are literally creating it for me. you are not going to find these freelance opportunities just on the internet for the most part, when you to go after them. And we need to get them. I will say a pro tip when it comes to pitching anything, is that it is a numbers game. I started my career in sales. I had to do 100 calls a day or like 100 emails a day. That's a very aggressive, I do not recommend that. And I do not do that now that I'm working for myself. But the same concept has applied when I've been pitching brands to either sponsor an event I'm doing or my podcast, or when I'm pitching media. When I'm trying to get some PR for a business or a project Working on, you have to email a lot of people and it ends up being a numbers game. You'll you will get some replies and you will get people who respond. But what I don't want to happen to you is you only pick two people and you email to, and you either don't hear back from them or you get an a no, and you get discouraged. At this stage when you're just starting out. If you're listening to this episode, you're probably very new to freelancing or you haven't even started yet. It is so important that you maintain your confidence, that this lifestyle is sustainable because it's going to be so tempting to be like, Oh no, it's not gonna work. It's not for me. I'll just stick to this life. I've already decided I don't like, I don't want that to happen for you. So what you're going to do is you are going to create a list of five to 10, ideally 10. Ten's my magic number of business owners. You personally know. People who have companies or who have a leadership role at a company who could be in a position to hire and you create that list. You can also create a list of people in your network who would introduce you to someone, maybe they know business owners. And they would vouch for you and they'd be happy to make that intro. make that list of 10 people and we're going to email all of them on the same day. You're going to set up a Gmail template if you don't know what a Gmail template is yet. So pause. Write yourself a task, come back to the podcast. Cause those are game changing. It's allows you to essentially at scale, create customized emails, do not blind. Copy this list of 10 people. You're going to send 10 personal outreach emails and you're gonna do it all on the same day so that the people who do reply and want to explore this with you. You'll just forget about the people who don't reply and you don't hear back from, so that's what you're going to do. I'm going to take a second here and talk a little bit more about mindset. I know we just kind of alluded to the mindset and the confidence building aspect when you're just starting out as a freelancer, but even as established freelancers, this is a limiting belief that I see people caught up on and that I was really caught up on. And it's the belief that. Someone who gives me a freelance opportunity. That's flexible. I can work on my own time from anywhere in the world. At my rate is giving me a favor. We feel like we're asking for a favor that this lifestyle is so great I'm so lucky that someone is allowing me to be a freelancer for their company that is wrong. Okay. Companies who hire freelancers. It is so advantageous to them. It's so attractive for them to hire a freelancer versus a full time employee. Let's think about for a second. If they have to hire a full time employee, they have to pay all different kinds of taxes and benefits to them. They have to often provide an office where the employee has to come in, where there's expenses associated with that. Maybe you have to buy them a laptop or different stuff to get started. There's a lot of expenses associated with that. As a freelancer, they don't have to pay for any of that. So not only is it cost effective for the employer, it's also a, risk-free remember they're in the driver's seat here at any time the company can terminate your freelance contract. So it's, risk-free for them to try out whether an employee is a fit. Often freelancers who start off in a contract basis become full time employees. I've seen this time and time again. And maybe that's a goal for you. Maybe you don't want a full time job, but I'm reminding you that you're not asking for a favor. This is a very attractive type of employment agreement for a company. So, but you offering, Hey, I'll work for you. As a freelance contractor is actually extremely attractive for them. Another reason it's such a win for a company is often these types of freelance projects. These are things that the company is wanting to do for a while. Okay. These are ideas that they've had. they know they want to grow their business this way. Maybe they've been receiving these requests from customers or their team has been talking about doing these things, but their current team does not have the capacity. They are full. They are busy with their current work or their current team doesn't have the skills. They don't have anyone on the team who can actually effectively run that Object. So again, when you are offering to do this for them as a freelancer, you're not asking for a favor, you are offering them something very, very valuable. And that was something I had to really learn and remind myself that if I was so grateful and felt so lucky, the first time someone hired me as a freelancer. But now that I really understand the economics of it, it's actually the other way around. remind yourself that you are not asking for favors here. When actually pitching these business owners, these 10 people that you're going to email on the same day, there's a few key elements that I recommend that you include in your pitch. the way I like to set up the email and frame, why I'm reaching out is that I have some extra capacity. So over the next couple of months, I have extra capacity and I am looking to take on a few new freelance projects. With companies I'm excited about. I then talk specifically about their company or them as a person. Why either they, as an entrepreneur and business owner is someone I respect and how I'd love to work with them or their company's mission. And what they do is something that aligns with me and something I'm excited about. give them a compliment, personalize it, let them know that this is intentional and you are intentionally asking to work with them. And that you're not just casting a wide net here. Next. I always like to give them some examples of past work. So I talk about a few different projects that I've done. It doesn't have to be in a freelance capacity by any means, especially if you're just starting out, just bullet point, a few different tangible examples of things that you've done and experiences you've had. That's gonna really help light bulbs go off about how they might be able to use you. And then I closed the email with a simple ask. Can we hop on a 15 minute call to explore a freelance opportunity to work together? That's all you're asking for. You just want to have the conversation and explore it. once you send those emails and you get on a call with someone and you talk a little bit about the project, what happens is you'll have a conversation about what their needs are. You'll talk a little bit about what you can do, and then they'll typically end the call with giving you homework, which is go back and create me a proposal and send me a proposal for the work I then create. Uh, one to two page document highlighting key. This would be the deliverables. This would be the timeline for the project. Here's the value that you would get out of it. And here's what I would get out of it, which would be my compensation. And this is where you talk to them about your rate and how you would price yourself. And that really is the process of getting started in pitching these businesses. When I say it to you and I wrote this down, it seems so simple, but for the first time you're doing it, there's a lot of question marks. I remember when I first wanted to freelance Googling, what is freelance, how to become a freelancer? Can I be a freelancer? Like I was starting from zero. So if you're listening to this episode, this really is the process that it can go through and it can be that easy. And now what I'm finding three years in is I'm not even raising my hand for work anymore. So much of freelance work is referral based. People are looking to make quick hires. When you're hiring a freelancer, you don't have the time to create a job posting and interview people and go through the process. So they're asking people in their network, do you know someone who can do this? I'm getting a lot of referrals. I'm using my social media channels to let my friends know that I'm a freelancer. I will highlight some of the work I'm doing. I'll talk about some of my clients very naturally, very organically. I really wouldn't call that selling. I would just call it, thought leadership, letting them know what's going on in my everyday life. I'm planting the seed in my networks mind that, Oh, Sam's a freelancer. Here's the thing she can do. So that when someone in my network inevitably has someone in power or someone who's hiring say to them, do you know anyone that can do this? I'm first one that comes to mind? what we talked about in this episode is really what I had to do in year one, year two and three and onward. A lot of it is just coming to me and you really will get there as well. The last thing I want to talk about in this episode is pricing your freelance work. I think this is one of the biggest hangups that freelancers have, and it was a barrier for me. And it was a question Mark. I didn't know how to get started. It would be irresponsible for me to give you a number, right? I have a diverse audience, a global audience, people who have different skills who are at different stages of their career. I'm not going to give you a number right now, but I'm not going to give you fluff either. I'll tell you that my personal experience pricing myself and pitching freelance opportunities has evolved. I'm now in the habit of every six months or so I'm increasing my quote unquote hourly rate. Okay. Every time. I do that every time I pitch a new opportunity and I say that higher price and someone says yes, and hires me, that's it. That's my new rate. And that's my new normal, and that the old rate that's done, if I can only pay me at that. I say no to that. And I'm so much more confident because this is my new rate and I've been increasing it. And I get into the habit of it. I tell you that because I don't want you to get discouraged if your first. Freelance gig and contract. Isn't the money that you're hoping for. If you're looking at that hourly rate or maybe it's a monthly retainer and you're like, how am I going to make the type of money I want? On this salary, like I need to just go get another job. Remember it can increase and it will increase the very nature of freelance contracts is that they're temporary. They're time bound before you know what the contract's ending and you're starting a new contract or you're renegotiating with the same company after you've already proven that you can do it and you can then ask for more. You can then increase your rate. don't get discouraged if your first project isn't where you want it to be. It should continue to increase. I'm increasing my rate about every six months. Another thing that I really like to do is I like to add a success fee to my proposals. which essentially is like a bonus commission that I get at the end of the project. So at the end of the, no, I typically do three month projects, at the end of the three months, if I've done everything that we agreed upon together, I get X amount and it's essentially like a little commission you get for doing your job. And in my experience, after the three months after you've crushed it, which I know you will, they're so confident in you and so grateful for your work and so happy with it that they're happy to pay you, that they are less likely to pay you up front, that higher amount when they haven't worked with you. So maybe you agree on an hourly rate that they're comfortable with, but then. You build in this bonus after three months, whatever that timeline is that you then get, which is that money that you're a lot more excited about. I typically make it a third of what the total project is. I find that to be very incentivizing. Not that you need it, you're going to do a great job, but it really just ensures that you're going to go above and beyond. And that there is opportunity for more income, if you are successful, it's called a success fee. I love to do that. And I really recommend you think about what that could look like for you. That's what I have for today's episode on how you can become a remote freelancer. If you want to talk any of this out with me as a reminder, I'm still offering my$30 for 30 minute brainstorming calls. I'm going to do them until the end of August. So if you want to book a call with me, I would love, love, love to be the girl to help you on this journey to becoming free. If you know, from my episodes, you know, I don't like to include a lot of fluff. I'm very action oriented and practical. And I can give you lots of resources and, and tangible next steps for you, but I can also talk to you about the mindset part, the emotional aspect. the type of mind frame you need to be in to be successful. which I think is equally part of it. So if you want to take advantage of that$30 with 30 minutes with me, what's your free.com is where you can book that call. if you have an aspiring freelancer in your life who wants to be living this life, please send them this episode their way. It's the only way I can support more freedom seekers and truly fulfill my life mission to liberate people through flexible work until next time, enjoy your freedom.