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My Personal Journey Becoming a Freelancer

So I often get asked what it's like to be a full time freelancer and you know, not have a normal 9 to job and just be able to focus 100% on growing your freelance business. And how did that whole transition go? What was the journey like? And although I think everyone, you know, obviously goes about in a very similar way where they maybe test the water and then obviously they, you know, leap head first into the world of freelancing and self-employment. Everyone's journey is a little bit unique. So what I want to do in this video is just share my story with you so that you can maybe find some things which are similar to your life so that you can hopefully use them to make your journey a a bit less painful. So I still remember the exact moment where I realized that this fiber thing could actually be something serious beforehand. I was just literally making 10 $15 every gig that I was selling, selling, you know, stupid stuff like social media packages and all that sort of stuff. I was jus...

t testing the water and seeing what was possible. But I remember I decided that I was going to focus everything on branding. I was going to be the branding guy. This is like, you know, six years ago when I first started on fiber. And I remember getting a message from a lady in Australia who was the head of marketing for a council in Melton. I believe the city was. And she basically said, listen, we need all these things. Can you send me a quote? And I was like blown away by the amount of stuff that she needed. But please bear in mind that I also at the time had no experience on Adobe illustrator. I had no idea what I was doing in regards to, you know, branding or logo design or anything like that or just design in general overall. And I had to deliver all of these goods within days. Now I decided to offer a solution for everything that she needed for the most amount of money I could comprehend and that was $1000. So I said, ok, if I can spend the next 30 days and get paid the same as my job, basically, that would be a win for me. And she's never gonna go for it anyway. But she did, she ended up securing the offer because it was probably five times less than, or 10 times less than anybody else who quoted her because there was so much stuff that needed to be done the thing that I did, which I think at the time was kind of smart, but I didn't really do it intentionally was I was basically getting paid to learn because I didn't have the first clue what to do with Adobe illustrator. I didn't really know anything about logo design. I had to study these things and understand how to use typefaces in the, in the right way, use colors in the right way, how to organize a banner image, all that sort of stuff. And it really put me on a crash course to learning all of the skills that I needed that I use, you know, pretty much every single day now, but I was getting paid for it. That was the difference. So I wasn't just sitting there reading books. I was actually doing things and getting paid while I was doing it. So, although I spent literally every waking hour of the next 30 days, and I think it even went over to like 45 days overall. And obviously, she was very happy because she got all this free work out of me. But obviously, I spent the 30 days really fine tuning my skills and really trying to make this client happy. And I learned a lot along the way and then after that package was delivered and obviously she was happy, I started to realize that, you know, maybe there's something about this fiber thing, maybe I can make enough money. To, to get by, maybe I can get enough money just to, you know, to live and eat and pay my mortgage and live a long happy life and just never have to leave the house. Basically last words of an introvert. So I started to think about how I can create my profile and how to refine it and work my way towards being a full time freelancer. Now, I started to get a few more packages through, although I definitely wasn't earning, you know, 1000 every package. And by the way, this package for 1000 included like about 20 grand's worth of work. Like it was, it was so much work. It was like 30 to 45 days worth of work. And I was working every minute that I had spare, including weekends, everything I didn't go out, I didn't do anything. So over the time that I started to realize that fiber could actually be a thing for me. I started to take it a lot more seriously. So I started to create gig videos. I started to, you know, learn about copywriting. I started to learn more about branding and logo design and you know, all these things that were really important to position me as a branding expert and slowly but surely I started to make more and more money on fiber. The more reviews I got, the more, you know, good feedback I got from clients, the more clients wanted to work with me. And it got to a point where I was really overwhelmed with the amount of clients that wanted to work with me simply because they could see how passionate I was about learning and working with them. And I think honestly, that was the thing that I did better than anyone else at the time. That's the reason why clients really wanted to work with me in the very beginning just because I was super excited about work with them and getting them the result that they need. Now, there was a turning point where I remember my income from my normal 9 to 5 job, which I was still working, by the way, was around $1500. Roughly now, my fiver income had been slowly creeping above that over the last couple of months. So I said to myself, ok, if I can get three months where I make around $3000 and I can prove to myself that I can make that fairly easily without a sweat, I'm gonna leave my job because if I'm making the same amount as my job, just working a couple of hours every single night, basically until I fell asleep, cos I was so tired after my normal work. What if I just my job and I just dedicated all my time to fiver and working with clients. And that was the turning point because the first month I think I made around 2 to 3000 the second month, I think it was a little bit more than the third month was actually quite funny because the third week, I think in the third month I got a call from my manager because I'd slept in because I'd been up all night working on client work. And obviously I wasn't really performing at my normal 9 to 5 job because I was focusing every spare second that I had on client work and building my business behind the scenes, which I do not recommend by the way. So please do not copy me. I'm sure there were far better ways to do the transition than what I did. But this is just how smart I was at the time, my boss called me and said, listen, Scott, you haven't really been performing. You haven't turned off for work today. Do you want to just, you know, do you want to just get fired basically and just leave the job and you know, we'll pay you up until this day and then that's it job done. And I remember having a really tight deadline for that particular day and I literally lay in bed and I was like, this is great. This is perfect. Ok. I was like, yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Bye bye. And I literally went straight to my desk and started working and I still remember that morning because my friend who was renting the room above me from me um within my house said that he came downstairs and I just looked at my desk, not this desk but another desk that was in the UK. And he said, you just look super lost like you didn't know what to do. And it's a really weird feeling when you first kind of make that leap from being in a to 5 job to being a freelancer, even though I knew that I could comfortably make enough money to survive. It was still a little bit weird not having anywhere to be and just focusing on what was on my computer screen. And I just remember sitting there eating my cornflakes and he was just like, it's pretty cool being self-employed. Right? Cos he'd been a self-employed hairdresser for, you know, like 10 years. I was like, yeah, it's pretty weird. So then I went to see my mum and gran and basically told them, listen, I'm going full time with the freelancing thing. I'm going to give it 100% and see what happens. Super scary. Obviously, cos I'd just literally bought a house. I had a loan on a car at the time. So there was a lot of stuff going on. It's pretty much the, the perfect time not to start a freelancing business and take a ton of risk. But nevertheless, we're still alive today and everything's going good. So thankfully, everything worked out. Now, one decision that I did make sure I made very early on when I started freelancing full time and getting all this freedom is I wanted to travel because I had, you know, a little bit more disposable income at the time. And I hadn't been to that many countries. I've been to the likes of Greece and Spain with my mum, but I hadn't really traveled any further than that. So I started to take trips every few months. So I first went to Madrid Spain, obviously, I didn't want to go too far. And then on the way back from Madrid to the UK, I booked another flight to Dubai because there was a super cheap flight and I just wanted to go out there because I'd never been to the Middle East. I've never been that far away from home. So I booked that flight. I went, I was super excited and I basically ended up meeting some guys there who were German and really, really friendly and they invited me to China within the next couple of months. So I went to China and then after that, I just ended up traveling to all these different places and basically figuring out that I can live and work anywhere. And I've lived in tons of different countries like China, Dubai, uh Georgia, um Thailand. So tons of different places that really give you a different perspective in regards to the balance of work and play. And once I had realized that I had done all the traveling that I really wanted to, I really started to take my business seriously and I really started to scale it to a point where I can make, you know, 10,000 15,000 $20,000 per month if I really wanted to. And it all comes down to how much work life balance I need. So for example, right now, I am expecting my first baby boy and I can't wait to meet him and obviously my wife is pregnant at the moment, so I need to take care, refer. So I'm not really doing much client work. I have a nice nest egg tucked away which I don't touch. And I just work with a couple of clients every couple of weeks if I really want to know if I get a little bit bored. But back in the early days, it wasn't quite like that. It was very much the case of being all in working with as many clients as possible so I can get super efficient and good at the things that I wanted to offer a service. And this is the the secret I think, I think during the start of your freelancing career, you really need to focus on fine tuning your skills and getting, you know, becoming one of the best in the world at the things that you can do. And you know, over the years, I've not just proving myself to being one of the best branding experts for start ups on the planet. I have a track record of thousands of clients that have worked with me that have left reviews on fiber that have ended up coming back to me again and again and again, because I understand what I'm doing because that is my target audience. That's what I learned was my sort of happy place of the types of clients that I wanted to work with. And sometimes I do just sit back and just think about if I hadn't made that single decision way back when, when I was sat there and I thought, hm, maybe this father thing is something quite special. I wouldn't have met my wife because I wouldn't have probably had the freedom to, you know, come to Asia. I probably wouldn't have my little boy who obviously isn't born yet, but I'm looking forward to, you know, spending time with him and everything that I've kind of got in my life, taken out of the context of money and finances and stuff that doesn't really matter what matters is everything that I have in my life and the happiness that I feel is all came from just putting a ton of work on fiber and with clients and building systems and really trying to be the best that I possibly can be when it comes to freelancing and a branding expert. And I think that if you were willing to put in the work and you trust the things that I'm going through with you in this course. And, you know, obviously being curious and just putting in the time you can have anything you want anything. And I truly truly mean that I truly mean that and yeah, hopefully this story is, um you know, giving you a little bit of perspective maybe and you know, helped you to kind of navigate things a little bit better your side and made things a little bit less painful. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and I'll see you in a future video.