Find Your Own Path
It’s been a bit more than a year since I made the decision to become a full-time freelancer.
I’ve worked more than thirty different jobs over the course of my life, from retail, to call-centers, to restaurants, in positions that cover everything from cooking to management. I learned a lot of different skills and lessons along the way, both from things that went well and from witnessing what seemed like obvious mistakes made over and over again. Most importantly, I learned that I don’t want to spend my life waiting for work to end so I can be free.
So I joined Upwork, with no special skills beyond a reasonably strong grasp of the English language. I started out doing transcription, because that seemed like a job anyone could do if they were willing to spend the time. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the money I could make doing transcription wasn’t worth the headache of listening to snippets of audio repeatedly to try and make out exact words and phrases, but I’d proven the concept to myself. I could make money with just a computer and an internet connection. My customer service skills and writing helped me connect with clients and served to elevate me in a sea of other proposals, and it wasn’t long before I realized the real benefit of freelancing.
I could get paid to learn new skills and develop them.
More importantly, I could get paid to learn and develop the skills that would let me build the kind of life I wanted to live, making the kinds of things I want to make. Things like script writing and voice acting. I ranted and raved about it to countless friends, some of whom dabbled and others who politely nodded along, clearly disinterested. When I found an opportunity to involve someone at a deeper level I partnered with a long-time friend, collaborator, and frequent roommate, Michael Chard. After a few months of working together on a couple different freelance projects, it became clear that our skills complemented each-other. We were both strong communicators, we’d worked together and lived together, and he had the visual design skills to allow us to complete whole projects with just the two of us. It wasn’t long before we decided to take the plunge and move towards launching our own media company, Radically Different.
After a couple months of planning and design we had agreed on a name, a logo, a slogan, a colour scheme, and a variety of other details, all while acquiring a small group of recurring clients as well as a couple one-offs. This past Monday we officially launched our Facebook page, along with our first teaser video.
On Wednesday we launched our Instagram page as another outlet for the various types of media and art we want to create and promote. We’re treating social media as a means of expressing our company’s voice, rather than a simple vessel for a standard method of promotion. We want to Be Outrageous, and always be finding new ways to grow and move towards whatever futures we can imagine.
This Medium publication is a part of that. I first found out about Medium when Bill Simmons and The Ringer moved here, but I’ve fallen in love with the breadth of content it can provide and the efforts it makes to give everyone a voice. We will be sharing our journey with you as co-founders here, but we also have plans to grow it in a variety of different directions, providing another kind of outlet for all kinds of media. I am surrounded by creative and inspiring people, and I want to build platforms that give them a voice, and all of these things are steps in that direction.
So follow along with our publication. Give us some claps if you like what you see and appreciate the direction, and don’t hesitate to comment, even if it’s just to point out somewhere I’ve screwed up grammatically.
See you in the future, and until then …
BE OUTRAGEOUS!
