As a (starting) freelancer, have you ever made a list of the pros and cons of freelancing? And how did the balance turn out? More cons than pros? And could you easily convert the cons into pros?
Starting of as a freelancer, with a lot of working experience (15+ in year in commercial management), I saw a lot of advantages.
- The flexibility of course, when and where to work. Managing my own schedule. I could decide what job I wanted to do or not, or for whom.
- Being my own boss, in a way.
- And as being an inquisitive person; I was really looking forward to experiencing different kind jobs and learning about different kind of organizations.
- And the satisfaction, of using all my knowledge and years of experience to help people and companies in developing themselves.
- Perhaps not for everybody, but Corona also took remote work really to the next level for me.
Besides the advantages I experienced also the disadvantages (and I know now, al lot of freelancers do).
However….
- The fact that there is uncertainty about income and workload. I took me quite some time to get used to that.
- Finding the right work-life balance. You don’t really close the door behind you at 5 o’clock. –
- The time it takes to find a next job. Marketing yourself, signing in at websites, agencies and maintaining your network.
- The online jungle. All the websites, platforms, agencies out there. I really had really no idea which platform, website or agency would work for me, besides the fact that I receive a lot of e-mails with job proposals that are mainly not a match.
- Every time you have to sign again and create a new profile and maintain it. If the profile doesn’t look good, or is incomplete, you will have less chance of getting hired or it has effect on your earnings.
And some of the disadvantages even became frustrations. Like every time you need to sign in, you create and maintain your perfect profile. Your profile looks different on each platform, and the reviews you collect as a freelancer are posted to a specific platform and are not interchangeable, so not really yours. While it’s all about you. Isn’t it?
As a freelancer you already are an entrepreneur of course, but I knew pretty quick that besides the advantages of freelancing, like the freedom. I also wanted to start my own business, build and grow a company and experience every facet of it. And when I met my first co-founder, these 2 merged together.
The idea of doing something for freelancers was already there, but how and what in reducing the disadvantages and frustrations, became clear after a while.
Wouldn’t it be great if you, as a freelancer, only had to create one perfect profile, with interchangeable reviews, verified skills, education and experience and is set-up the way it works best for you? And isn’t clear that for different kind of freelancers, a different kind of set-up of one’s profile is important?
When you are a designer, your portfolio is more important than your working experience, and when you’re developer, your hard skills are more important.
Freelancing will emerge more and more to a professional way of working, the future of work will really change, in a hybrid way, but also in the way we will work together, like in flexible teams.
I truly believe that freelancing will develop in a very professional sense and that freelancers, but of course also the hiring agencies and companies in that matter, will search for a match on different levels; core values, (hard and soft) skills, industry, experience, portfolio and in different combinations.
Do you share this vision?