The lifestyle challenge — part 2

This post is a continuation of my previous post, explaining my crackdown and the decision to jump into a nomad lifestyle.

After stressing out for a month about the usual initial concerns -how to make money? do I have enough? how’s my savings burn-down?-, I put myself to work on those concerns instead of stressing-out about them. The usual path to follow? The freelancer website.

It’s really hard to compete in a website where you have A LOT of people bidding for jobs, and most potential employers hire based on price and not actually background or expertise… but it’s doable!

Thought my main advantage is an expensive one to execute (I’m pretty good and detailed explaining my approaches to projects, technology and market), by the time I started, freelancer had removed the ability to send your proposals in a graphic format -mostly PDF or PPT-… so, what a waste of my charm!

If a prospect makes it to a skype-call with me, so far my deal-closing ratio has been 100%… but guess what? I had to send 157 proposals to make it to a skype-call with ONLY TWO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS. Rough, huh?

The first one -a SF based startup- didn’t really payoff for me. They picked my brains for a couple of hundred dollars on how to face a project, to afterwards use those guidelines to have a 9 USD/hr developer to do the actual implementation. Should I say that, of course, they did not hit their deadlines (but the project made it to production at some point anyway).

If it’s hard to explain to an SF-based start-up (c’on! they’re the meca of tech projects, right?), how can I prove the usual prospects in Freelancer that it makes sense to pay a higher hourly rate to get a higher quality outcome in-time and probably not so far above their budget? -it’s proven that top-notch developers work upto 20x faster than the average-. Fortunately, my fear was partially unfunded. And about the SF guys, I’m sure they had their reasons, and I still hope they’ll bring some good news for me in the future!

In the end, I got lucky and found an awesome client.
I did a small project for an Australian company, who valued the quality of my deliverables, communication skills, added-value in terms of ideas and approaches to their needs; and finally offered me a decent hourly rate for a 1 month project.

I am working on it now, and hopefully more work will come from them. It fills me up with hope, that even tho it took 155 lost projects, my tenacious attempt to find a customer that would value my 15-years of experience in working for top-notch companies in high-demand projects paid off. All I have to do now is live up to my promise of delivering top-quality work within the arranged deadlines, and keep giving them the best of my heart and my brains in shape of suggestions and commitment.

I also got lucky enough to land a contract with my partner’s employer (do not hesitate to ask friends, connections and family for help!), to help them migrate data-centers and design their IT road map for the middle-term to improve the scalability and reliability of their business and regain ownership of their operations. They have so far proved to be an understanding and easy-going client, and I also hope to do much more business with them in the near future!

Bottom line, I am still concerned about my income as I have only 1 month visibility and no further contracts for July and on, but opportunities and ideas are starting to arise and, guess what?, I’m 65% on my way to make the same money I made in a year as an offshore employee, in only 2.5 months of hard work now that I removed most middle-man from the equation (I had a project before where there were 4 services providers in the middle, everyone taking a nicer cut than myself while I was doing all the work…).

I also work around the concept that I can help my clients do more with less. Work smarter. Focus on actual value-generation. Improve time-to-market. Reduce total-cost of ownership for their solutions.

I am happier than ever with the quality of my work, and the resulting customer satisfaction!

So what if I don’t get an awesome project each month?.
I still have my personal projects to work on, and an incredible quality of life while traveling, surfing and discovering awesome new places and people!

BTW, if you are up for some free consultation on your projects, I am always open to collaborate and hopefully help you out or create some kind of synergy! You guys -and girls- can always email me or come visit our website.

See you in the next episode: nomad life in BALI and the awesome crew we met there!

A penny for your thoughts! ☺