A Freelancer’s Journey to Full-Fledged Business Owner: The Prologue
Let’s face it: I’m a quitter.
It’s true. I start and quit more things each day/week/year than I can keep track of. I have stacks of unfinished books on my nightstand, blog posts that have an entire outline written but haven’t seen the light of my laptop screen since, I quit my yoga teacher training twice before I finally finished, and I’m fairly certain there’s something in the back of my mind always looking for the easier route.
Hell, I’ve quit writing this post three times now.
And yet quitting things has served me well at times.
I’ve quit bad habits, left behind toxic relationships, and I’m even attempting to quit being so hard on myself (ha).
In July 2017, I quit my in-house marketing gig at a startup and set out on my own (plus one for another time when being a quitter served me well).
The funny thing about quitting a job but still needing to pay your bills is that you have no choice but to keep going. It’s stopping one thing to start another.
I kept going
Last night I looked at my books: since that day I quit, I’ve kept myself busy. In fact, in just about six months, I’ve made $43,191.31.
Pull 35% for (a conservative) tax estimate and 10% for business expenses and my take-home is $23,755.22.
Averaged out, that’s just under $4k/month in gross revenue. With the cost of daycare for two kids exceeding our monthly mortgage payment and some outstanding debts to pay off once and for all, I know that a $4k average month just won’t cut it.
Now I’m not telling you this to humblebrag. I’m well aware of the fact that many freelancers struggle to make $4k/month. I’ve worked hard to get to where I am right now and I’ll share more about how I did that in another post. I’m telling you this because I’ve learned an important lesson in the last two years.
How not to quit
That lesson is a little thing called public accountability. And I learned the most about it from my friend Matt Ragland.
I met Matt at that job I quit and he has a bit of advice for quitters like me:
Start.
Frustrating, unnerving, and merciless. There’s nowhere to hide. With no book to buy, workshop to attend, or shortcut to take, I cut and run in search of more immediate gains. Jon Acuff told me that inspiration without instruction is worthless. I agree, but in this case, Start! is easy to say and difficult to practice. I’m a writer, no matter what other jobs and “fundraising” opportunities I take on to support the habit. And do you know what writers do? They write.
There’s also something that Matt doesn’t say… he just does.
Can you see it on his YouTube channel?
He works in public.
Matt has a sketchnotes business and he’s constantly sharing his process on his YouTube channel. He talks about the work he does in SaaS onboarding and what he’s learning on his way to becoming a product manager.
I’ve learned so much from just watching Matt that it’s time for me to practice what he preaches.
Freelancer or Business Owner?
So back to those earnings to date.
As I assessed what I brought in this year and what my goals are for next year and beyond, I realized it’s high time I take my business seriously.
I’ve been operating like a freelancer but what I want to be is a business owner.
I want to take everything I learned from the software world these last two years and apply it to running my own business.
And I don’t want to quit.
So when Joanna Wiebe popped into my inbox and mentioned her 10x Freelance Copywriter program, I bought it hook, line, and sales page.
And then guess what I did? (Just guessssss.)
I thought about quitting.
In the introductory module, Joanna talked about doing hard, er, commonsense things like: setting theme days on my calendar, hiring a VA, productizing my services, installing cashflow projection software, and treating my business like (duh) a business.
And then Jo said “I’m taking it easy on you in this module. We’re really going to ramp it up in January.”
Ramp it up??? To what? I’ve already waved goodbye to taking time off between Christmas and New Years in exchange for working on all of this Big Girl Business stuff. Now you’re telling me there’s gonna be more??
Nope. I quit.
…. is what I wanted to do.
Then I thought about Matt. WWMRD (what would Matt Ragland do)?
Work in public
“Matt would work in public,” I said to myself last night in my internal monologue listing the reasons I should take Jo up on her 60-day money back guarantee.
So.
I’m not quitting.
Instead, I’m going to work through this course in public. I’m documenting my experience going from a $40k/year freelancer to….
Well, if I were to actually 10x my revenue (as the title of the course implies), I’d be looking at over $430,000. Per year.
While that kind of revenue might not be realistic for my first year as a Real Business, I can 10x the following:
- Output: I haven’t written for my own blog in well over a year. Documenting this process will 10x my personal writing.
- Industry participation: Sure, I’m active on Twitter and share the occasional screenshot of a good/bad email I get in my inbox. To 10x my participation in the email marketing industry, I’m committing to weekly email marketing dissections for subscribers to my email list. I’ll even throw a few on my blog for fun.
- Systems: Look, I know I used to run a business helping people setup systems for their own businesses. Shoemakers kids and all that, k? I’ve spent the last six months with essentially no systems in place so I’ll get that all buttoned up.
And I’m sure there’s more.
Financially speaking, even if I simply 5x my revenue, that’s $215k.
From that take out $75,250 for taxes and $21,500 for expenses and my net profit is $118,250.
A super decent goal to set for myself and one that doesn’t make me want to, well, quit.
If you’ll be following along, you can expect me to post updates here every week in the first three months of Q1; that’s when the course officially starts. Once we’re through the course content, I’ll probably keep updating this monthly.
Matt says that working in public becomes a habit once you do it for a while.
As for quitting? I think I’ll quit that too 🙂
