How to get started with freelancing

How to get Started with Freelancing

For Tech ProfessionalsBy Loc Nguyen, lochnguyen@gmail.com

Who am I?

● Loc Nguyen

● Active in the local community

○ AngularJS-OC, ReactJS-OC, PeopleSpace

● Consulting on a lot of things *

○ AngularJS, ReactJS, Node, Ruby, Cordova, APIs etc

● 1st client in 2012 when startup gig didn’t work out

Agenda

1. Why you should and shouldn’t freelance

2. Your gameplan

3. Favorite freelancing resources

4. AMA

Should you freelance?

● There’s a lot of money for you

● There are a lot of people who want your help

● You control your working hours

○ Great if you have a family or want to pursue hobbies

○ Take a month off if you want

● You are in charge of your own career

○ Pick the technology you like to work with. Clients pay for your

education.

○

Congrats on the career change!

● You’re now in sales.

○ You’re hunting for all that money from all those people

○ You need a pipeline to qualify and close deals

● But wait, you’re a marketer too.

○ People have to know you’re for hire

○ How’s your copy writing?

● And you’re also in accounting and collections.

○ Uncle Sam needs his cut

○ Sometimes clients “forget” to pay invoices

● Feast and famine

income

● Drive your career and

pick your specialties

● Learn a ton of

entrepreneurial skills

● Steady paycheck &

raises

● Health and retirement

benefits

● Narrow and

straightforward

responsibilities

The 5 Things We Want in a Job

1. Work with great people

2. Make a lot of money

3. Solve interesting problems

4. Short commute

5. Reasonable hours

But we can only have 3 at a time.

1. Work with great people?

2. Make a lot of money

3. Solve interesting problems

4. Short commute?

5. Reasonable hours?

Very meta.

But how do I you started?

Personal Branding

● Build trust – pull prospects to you

● Be visible

○ Present at conferences, lead meetups or volunteer as a

speaker, be a face in the community

○ Blogs, social media, e-mail courses on your specialty

● Start immediately ;)

○ AngularJS-OC, ReactJS-OC

○ Product Managers of OC

○ PeopleSpace Community School

Positioning Your Brand

● Specialize and be known for something

○ less competition, higher rates

○ the ideal client will gladly pay for an expert consultant to

solve their expensive problems

● Position what you do

○ I’m a UI consultant who fixes interface problems causing

customer drop off.

○ I didn’t go to a “full-stack” doctor for my ACL replacement

○ My son was not delivered by a generalist

Marketing Your Expertise

● Push your service to prospects

● Tell people you’re for hire

○ connect with family, friends, past co-workers and bosses

● Learn great copywriting; copyhackers.com

● Go to networking events, don’t be pushy

○ Hear people talk about their problems

○ Offer a valuable freebie if they email you

■ lead self-qualifies and takes the first step into your funnel

■ don’t send lame emails the next day, e.g. “Great meeting you, let’s talk

if there’s anything I can do.”

What is valuable freebie?

● Something useful that demonstrates you’re legit

○ Web page UX teardown

○ Copy suggestions

○ Page load and rendering time measurements

○ Analytics suggestions

● Makes you memorable compared to everyone else at

the networking event

What should your rate be?

● Yearly salary / 2000 hours

○ $100,000 / 2,000 hours = $50/hour

○ This doesn’t account for health and dental, 401k, PTO,

training and other “costs of employment” your employer paid

● A decent rule of thumb is to double that to $100/hour

○ You are not billing 40 hours a week for the entire year

○ But taxes and other costs of self-employment :(

○ Decent but probably bad rule of thumb

● Work for free or for a good rate. Discounts devalue.

Should you work on fixed bid project?

No.

Weekly > Hourly > Fixed.

Where to find your first clients?

● Did you start branding yet?

● Referrals from updating your friends, family and past

colleagues that you are solving the problem of

________ for customers who are _______.

● Sub-contract to build a portfolio and network

○ Are you going to email me about this?

● Job boards, RFPs

○ Too much work and hard to qualify the leads

Should you jump in?

● Beggars can’t be choosers

○ You’ll start taking on bad clients if your cash flow is bad

● Risk tolerance

○ I had to consider mortgage payments, a son on the way,

health benefits for the family, and wife not working for 6m

○ Mitigated the risk with a long runway of savings

● Moonlighting is a low risk way to get your feet wet

and build that runway

Where I’m at Now

● Hate bookkeeping and collecting money, can’t justify

outsourcing yet. Definitely the worst.

● Cleared enough to survive a 6 month dry spell before

touching the runway.

● Subcontractors helping so I can take on longer term

projects and work on sales and marketing.

● Binging on learning the psychology behind sales and

copywriting, struggling to apply it myself

Picks: Books

1. Get Clients Now - how to start a sales

funnel for dummies

2. Double Your Freelancing Rate - how to

maximize your earnings

3. The Brain Audit - the psychology of

making a sale

Picks: Podcasts

1. The Business of Freelancing

2. The Freelancer’s Show

3. Working without Pants

Hello

E-mail me at lochnguyen@gmail.com

Tweet me at @locn

Connect with me on linkedin.com/in/lochnguyen

Email me your questions and/or market your services ;)