Image: Procedural Brutalism by Stefan Kwint
I had a young woman I know ask for me some advice about freelancing since she knows I work with contractors at work. I shared what I could think of at the time but thought it would be a good idea to try to encode a few things here publicly so that I can point people to this when it comes up again. I’ll try to keep this short and to the point and maybe I’ll elaborate on some of the individual points later. Why am I qualified to deliver this advice? I was a freelancer and independent artist for about 20 years and survived and fed my family using these rules.
Don’t Worry About Competition: In our heads many of us worry that there are so many other talented people out there competing for the same opportunities. There are a few reasons not to worry about this. The first is that for any given opportunity the person hiring generally has to pick one of the limited number of people who has actually shown up. You only need to be the best candidate out of the people who have actually applied. This is a much much smaller pool of people than you think because…
Most People Don’t Show Up: There are a lot of talented people out there who are defeated at the starting line by their own psychology. Don’t be one of them. Be OK with starting before you’re ready, going after things that are a little too hard and frankly admitting when you don’t know how to do something. Many people spend their lives waiting for the stars to perfectly align before they start, which never happens. Just starting whether you’re ready or not will give you a huge advantage on everyone else. Don’t worry too much about it because…
No One Actually Knows What They’re Doing: We all try to look like what we know what we’re doing, but mostly we don’t. We start, run into obstacles and climb over them one at a time. You can do this too. Modern life and work is way too complicated to know more than a fraction of it before you begin. Get good at learning quickly and overcoming obstacles by doing research and asking for help when stuck. These are priceless skills that actually get things done.
Network Laterally: Build a community of working friends who are at a similar stage to you. Befriend people who are dealing with the same opportunities, problems and challenges. Reach out to them and help them. Over time the rising tide of age and years of work will lift all boats. Before you know it the person you made friends with while they were an intern will be a manager or running a company. People often focus on impressing people above or ahead of them. Usually you have much less in common with these people and they are not encountering problems or creating opportunities that you are able to participate in. People closer to your level in the process will know about similar jobs, projects and have much more in common with you to talk about.
Market Yourself: Whether you recognize it or not you’re running a one person business and you need to sell your services. Make sure what you are doing is public and visible which is super easy nowadays thanks to the internet and social media. Create a stream of documentation of everything you do, both in terms of commercial paid work and your personal work. I personally use Twitter, YouTube and a WordPress blog which are all free. You don’t need anything fancy.
Keep Your Costs Low: Don’t develop a fancy lifestyle when you are attempting to build your career. You need to be able to invest your most valuable resource, your time, into your work. If you are struggling with debt, high rent or expensive lifestyle you will not have the time freedom to take on valuable but potentially risky or low paying opportunities. Importantly the most valuable and potential highly rewarding opportunities are usually low paying and high risk. High paying stuff is usually boring and fairly straightforward, that’s why it pays a lot. Keeping a low cost of living allows you to take chances so you can…
Say Yes To Weird (Paid) Stuff: The debate around exploitation, getting paid, working for exposure is a complex one, especially as it pertains to people who are starting out. Generally speaking if you are working for free it should be on stuff for your close friends where you’re effectively gifting your time and learning or on your own high risk / high reward projects. Working for exposure for free for other people is usually a bad idea. Generally speaking, if your working for free for yourself and marketing and documenting your activity you can create your own exposure. Also, people who are not willing to risk money on a project usually are not that serious, so it’s probably not going to generate a lot of exposure anyway. However, doing low paying work is a different story. Saying yes to low paying work often will lead to more interesting and higher paying work. Unless there is a big line of people waiting to pay for your time, if someone offers you low paying work in your chosen field, give it a shot. You can always stop or quit if it turns out not to be good. It’s a chance to make business connections and get around people who are working and getting paid. If you’re smart this can lead to a chain of further opportunities.
Be Worth Recommending: The biggest source of work and income in life is your network of working friends. The way this works in most freelance business is that you build a reputation as a pro and then you vouch for other people. This is a very serious commitment in all the businesses I’ve worked in. I can’t stress this enough. If I vouch for a person for a job to a contact of mine, it’s as if I hired them myself. My work contact who hired them did so based on the strength of my word. Very often that is the ONLY reason this person got hired, not because of resume, not because of anything but the fact that someone solid vouched and said that they were also solid. This means that as a professional, you need to…
Be Solid: This means that no matter what happens you keep your word and make sure the job gets done. You show up on time, complete your work at the highest level of quality and do everything you can to make the job a success. If something goes wrong like you get sick or you have a death in the family, you have someone else from your network step in to cover and complete the job. You never leave someone hanging, never flake out and never allow a job to get fucked up. This is almost all that matters and this is basically the only reason people will hire you, because they believe in your capacity to deliver and they believe they can count on you. Critically, you extend these same standards to anyone you recommend. If you have a friend that you know is talented but not solid, you do not recommend them as they will destroy your professional credibility.
I think these are a good place to start. If folks are interested I might expand on some of the individual ideas. If you found this interesting and would like more, leave a comment on this post.
