People often tell me that I had a lot of guts to leave my job to become a freelancer. I was risk happy.
This might be the case. But consider the reality of the landscape I left: I saw that the mortgage brokers, independently, at least, were dead men walking. This was in 2007. The peak of the industry was probably late 2005. 2007 was when the carnage started. I didn’t see it as an ‘ending’ thing.
I made more money because then, I set out to learn from every deal. I watched the landscape change. But I was having to improve my skills fast to just keep pace. I was having to work harder than I wanted to to just survive. And I was working among toxic people. Lies harm your soul. In every way, lies hurt. Tolerating lies in your life is like not worrying about cancer. The lies that swirled around the industry were different–radically–than the media portrayed them, but there were lies nonetheless (note: the endproduct of lying is the same as laziness.)
I’m making a good living, slowly clawing my way out of IRS debt, but it’s not great. And even though I have clients and stuff, I am still plagued with wanderlust. Can I do this?
I could. Little voices said, “quitter, quitter,” because I didn’t want to join the scores of people that left the industry to join scummy things like selling MLM or some sort of bizzaro sweep account with martian math…I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be a quitter.
I guess, I didn’t want to be one of those end-of-the-bar mopes that Alec Baldwin described: “I used to be in sales, tough racket.”
For a while, I wanted to monetize my client base. I tried with my employers at FOHF, but they lacked the give-a-shit factor that you need to have. 4 or 5 people didn’t close with them, but did close with Dan Green closed 3 of the 4 that I referred out, one with major problems, two with minimal hassle. I wanted to stick around, sort of, and get fed off of what I had built as a loan guy. I wanted one foot in the door there, just in case.
How I Got to be a Good Freelancer.
I had to cross the Rubicon. I cut my ties, for the last time in May of 2008. No loans, no loan questions, no loan drama, nothing. That helped. . I was holding on to something that was hurting me. First, I took some work, first for Tim, then for other friends, setting up WordPress blogs. The entire time, I was trying to build a membership site. I failed–but that was my fault. I succeeded at selling the damn thing, but I failed at running it. The sales portion is easy, the implementation is where challenges come in. Story of my life.
Then, I charged 2k-3k to get people set up and trained on blogs. But there was something amiss. That price point is just incorrect–it’s neither cheap nor expensive. It gets the wrong crowd. It brings entitlementality, revision hell.
After fits and starts, I figured out Thesis. Borne out of a need to be cheaper and reduce friction, customer service and entitlement among my customers, I created a cheap-o blogging platform. http://guerrilla.me/thesisblogs. I recorded a ton of tutorial videos (Screenflow is the best tutorial making software), and threw ‘em into .flv and put ‘em into wP. And I sold blogs–that others sold for $2500–for $750. And was profitable, with a low cost of sale and a higher value proposition. End of story. I was then free to sell something.
That meant that I have a way to make money any day I wake up, I can have $2500 before sundown, and it was mine. Soon, fulfillment will not be my bottleneck.
Where Risk Is And Where It Isn’t
In 2007 when I took the plunge most time, I was a mortgage dude. Right? Had a good income and solid client base. Anyway, gist is this: I was at risk then. Every day lenders were leaving, Barney Frank was sending regulations down the throat of a whipped and chastened industry. I didn’t love the work. I loved being of service to people, I loved the ego, I loved moving a million dollars around.
There was grave risk there. Regulatory risk: in Ohio, SB 185 was such that ordinary clerical errors carried a felony with them. That’s risk.
Most people are subject to the caprices of an inept boss or bureaucracy. That’s risk.
Most people are in a job, capped at what they can do, make, learn and be for 40 of the 168 hours that we have in a week. That’s risk.
Most people–like I was–are paycheck to paycheck, a misstep away from bankruptcy, a mistep away from doom. No more secure than I am, but because another name is on the check, they seem to think that it will come. That’s risk.
Risk is siting in a job you hate, ONE MORE F#@%king DAY for a paycheck that’s not worth it. Taking your soul and beating it into blandness. Making your life’s work amount to Schmidt’s .
You don’t need a fortune to leave a bad job. You need 2 weeks survivability. You need to do like I did: get rid of the Acura RL, the big house payment. Get rid of ego-head. Sell.
(For more info on how to sell, get on the list for http://freelancerbattleplan.com)
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