1. Money or Coolness
A series of learnings, take aways and experiences from this mad mad digital world.
During the last few weeks before I decided to shut down my startup, I already began to dip one foot in the stormy sea of freelancing to create a sort of cushion in order to make the fall a bit less painful.
There’s quite a leap indeed between putting all your effort in something you truly believe in, something yours and selling your skills to someone else to make a living.
Ok, not so harsh.
But reality is that when you freelance you are working for someone other than you, you’re responsible for yourself and you have to deliver. When you’re instead building something for the community, something that solves a problem for people, you feel responsible for much more than just you, you are doing something that will become greater than you.
Note: I’ll talk about freelance job but I don’t mean only as individual, but as agency or association in general, considering “freelance” everything that you do upon payment for a client, not something you do for yourself or your . company (we will talk a bit later about the entrepreneurial side of having an agency).
The trick to keep the fire burning, the will to create something great, it’s to find the same passion in what your clients are doing to feel attached and interested in the projects you are supporting with time and knowledge.
Unfortunately though for everyone comes that time of the month when you have to pay rent, when the guy from the cool project you’re in touch with tells you they have a lower budget than you deserve, when the last client is late with payments and so on. Or if viceversa you’re smart, you decided to start with projects that are more remunerative and less “cool” to gain stability and balance, so you make website and social media management for a restaurant, an import-export, or some other more “normal” businesses, not the next startup that will change the world of (insert whichever industry of your choice).
What drives me and many other freelancers or agencies I had the pleasure to meet, it’s indeed to participate in stimulating projects, vibrant creative processes, environments (virtual or real doesn’t matter) where you feel your creativity and skills are taken in account quite seriously with the aim of building a successful collaboration. What pays my and many other freelancers and agencies rent’s on the other hand, are the projects with less detached relations: briefings, receive tasks, execute tasks, deliver, get paid and bye bye.
In a pure customer acquisition driven approach to freelancing and to building an agency, you break down market, opportunities and targets as well as you would do for a client, right? Less risk and heart, more analytics and brain.
Of course you try to find your niche. Without any doubt, finding your sweet spot either in terms of size, industry or stage, nowadays it’s key not only for success but for survival too. At a given moment, when nothing is going on, when it’s august and your clients are on holiday, when it’s Christmas and people don’t want to think about the next year, you might find yourself working with other kind of businesses like insurance companies, small banks, B2B, SMEs etc. or in general something outside your niche.
It’s no secret that companies like the ones I just mentioned generally can rely on bigger budgets than the average startup or project. They also have more stable and fixed processes, making your life easier but more boring, will pay for your rent and holidays but they most probably won’t enrich you as individual or as a professional and creative.
This is not any sort of unspoken truth or anything, not every freelancer, professional or agency has 100% projects which are brilliant, have an impact or become viral. Pretty much everyone, in particular in a early stage, works on some projects which are not too stimulating or not too thrilling yet remunerative and it’s something that beside the money brings important learnings and takeaways.
Working on projects that are not in your niche or where you are less emotionally involved will show yourself how you apply your skills in different scopes and enrich someone else, how much you learnt by creating brand identities, launching campaigns and marketing products/services in projects you took part of by taking a leap and working for less money or “on equity” because you believed in the idea and the people.
Probably there’s no ratio or precise balance between the type of projects you can be involved in, but you should always consider that having a steady minimum amount of income that pays your rent, bills and food will give you more time and freedom to think and work on ideas, projects and initiatives you will be really thrilled about.
I’m seldom tweeting sort of interesting things so you can follow me there or reach out for inquiries, insults and compliments of any kind at mat@isacvolani.com
