Full-Time to Freelancing is Harder Than You Think
A recent New York Times article follows a handful of people who have left their high paying jobs (either by choice or by the recession) to start small businesses focused on their dream jobs. The spoiler? It’s really hard—but that hasn’t stopped anyone.
“Indeed, since the dawn of the Great Recession, more Americans have started businesses (565,000 of them a month in 2010) than at any period in the last decade and a half, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which tracks statistics on entrepreneurship in the United States.” —New York Times
The lures of quitting your day job to focus on freelancing are pretty much the same as starting a small business—no boss, working from home in your pajamas, fulfillment that you are doing what you want to do. The downside is the same, too—lack of security, pay fluxuation, and sheer exhaustion.
What surprised me in this article was that every single one of these people seemed to find that leaving their jobs to strike out on their own came with crazy-long work hours. One of my favorites was Mary Lee Herrington, a 32-year-old from St. Louis who quit her $250,000 a year, 60 hour a week job at a London law firm to start her own wedding planning business.
“But soon after starting her one-woman business, Forever & Ever Events, she quickly found it wasn’t a 9-to-5 gig. Working out of the Primrose Hill apartment she shared with her husband, she often found herself glued to the computer past midnight, doing spreadsheet analyses of her new business, or writing copy for her Web site. Whenever a wedding date approached, she found herself pulling 17-hour days.
For her first client, a work colleague of a friend, she was so eager to prove herself that she charged $2,000 for a job that took five months. For another wedding, “the clients were very demanding of my time, so much so that when I broke down the fee by the number of hours, I was making close to £1 an hour,” Ms. Herrington said. (By comparison, her rate as a lawyer was $450 an hour.)”—New York Times
Starting a new career path takes time, and it takes hard work. How many of us freelancers kept our full-time jobs while freelancing on the side for months, even years? I know I did. It’s especially hard when you don’t have a spouse to lean on financially. Your bills don’t stop coming just because your freelance paychecks are sometimes irregular.
It takes a while to build up a client base with regular work. When you are just starting out you’re doing much more hustling for work than a seasoned freelancer—and you might not be able to charge what you want because you have no credibility. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. All parties interviewed for this New York Times article (with the exception of one woman) said that, “despite the unforeseen bumps, they would not trade their new lives for their old jobs.”
Has converting from a full-time job to freelancer status been worth it to you?
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by xilius.
haha I can relate to the $2000 for five months work scenario! I hope it paid off with some excellent work-of-mouth recommendations.
Long as you learn from experiences like these and continue to hone your skills it’s good development.
Yup..i agree with this article that to start with freelancing is always difficult but you are your own boss, you can have more partners, workers working for you, you also can take leave whenever you like by reducing your workload.
You can also charge more money and earn more when you taste success after a while.
I am already doing this…and i love it…its been 2 years now and i am making no plans of ever returning to my full time job….well to be frank…freelancing has become my full time job now..i have 18 people working for me…LOL..apart from myself..
“despite the unforeseen bumps, they would not trade their new lives for their old jobs.”
Amen to that.
Oh man, I started my business January 2011, quit my full time in April and took a couple at home part-time jobs and been doing full-time freelance work since the end of August. I’m still building up my clients and luckily so far have been doing really well but the hours can be hectic. I honestly take work everywhere with me, I no longer have a weekend lol and am usually up at 10am and go to bed at 2am or later.
However, I enjoy it, know it’ll get better and love what I do. Those things alone make me the happiest guy in the world and so far I’ve had great clients, so that always helps too
I found my self working as a freelancer so many times. The last time i switched to it full time, i was doing well and making 3 times more my average salary between all full time jobs. How ever…
It really killed me to not have a working environment. No people, no chats, no observations, not even looking out the window and see cars and people running “like i used to do every morning when i arrive at my last full time job”.
Then, i decided to go for a full time job at a firm again. This time, more demands, more salary, and more of demands. I was clear from the start so that was a plus.
Starting as a freelancer is hard. You never know what to charge, how to present, how to deal with and so on. But after a while of hard work, it pays off “like i said, 3 times my average salary per job”
Freelancing is not for everyone. There are a lot of ideas on this blog on how to stay connected when working by yourself…like getting involved in the community or seeking out a co-working space. But hey, at least you don’t have to listen to one of your coworkers clipping his fingernails at his desk (yes, this happened to me…and it drove me nuts!)
Its mainly about the ambition to have something for my own that drove me to freelance. I have my own set of mind and thinking, and business owners/managers only agree with things that will generate direct income “at least in this country it is”. never is it related to quality, nothing about long term benefit, or maybe i’m just listening to much to my self.
Besides that, something like that happened to me in 3 jobs i quit. So the creative department just makes one very long desk and puts 3-4 PCs on it. Then comes the guy next to me “who just had a fight with his wife” and starts shaking his foot with both his arms leaned over the desk. He didn’t realize it until the desk actually started squeaking!
I can relate to the finger nail clipping fiasco. Really… You are working and there is no time for that!
It. Was nasty.
It’s definitely not easy, but there are perks to freelancing that make it worthwhile.
Like you said Melanie, it’s not for everyone and I think it’s important that people examine the reality before chasing the big carrots (no boss and more money). Working for yourself means wearing a lot of different hats and you have to enjoy (or at least tolerate) the ‘business’ side of your business. This means paperwork, taxes, difficult clients, business plans and plenty of networking. And, as someone else mentioned, it can be lonely. That said, when you succeed, even a little success, it’s all yours and it feels pretty wonderful. I’m lovin’ it, roadbumps and all.
People work as much as they want to work. That’s what I think and I believe it’s true in most of the cases.
Beginning is always hard.
Personally, I think the hardest factor in freelancing is sourcing new clients.
Initially it is hard to play all role but once it gets going, you’ll love it especially the fact that you’re doing stuff you love to do the most!!!
This is a great article. I think everybody who’s thinking about quitting the ol’ day job and freelancing should give it a read. There is no Plan C!!
For me, it’s been totally worth it but it was hard. I suffered from workaholism for a while until I got a grip on myself. But you kind of have to I guess if you want to freelance.
Edmund and Melanie, I just wanted to say that the anti-social aspect of freelancing is wonderful for me. I love having no co-workers! But I can see how it could bring ya down.
I’ve worked as a web designer/developer for over 13 years. I’ve been a freelancer fulltime for about the last 4 years. I’ve not once woke up longing for my old job. I make three times as much money as I ever made working for someone else. And I don’t even think about growing it into a larger company because it doesn’t seem worth it.
Whats the secret? First be willing to work any hour to meet a deadline regardless of when someone supplies you what you need in order to finish. Thats just part of it. Don’t try to freelance at something no one wants. And make lots of great friends. I really only have to work hard for about 5 people that work in related businesses in order to assure a constant steady flow of work. Most of my referrals come from those five people and I do whatever it takes to keep them happy. And as I loose one of those 5 core (for whatever reason) then I typically pick up another one.
And finally, charge what you are worth. Depends on where you live but if I’m not making $75-$100/hr for every billable hour then I am not making enough to make it worth it to freelance. I would put that that number much higher in some cities.
I think the reason some people don’t transition well into freelancing from a full-time job is because they don’t realize or understand the business side of things.
When your working full-time for a company you only worry about what you have to do. You have other people looking for new clients, you have accounts, project managers, etc.
But when your on your own you take on all those responsibilities and if your not business savvy it can lead to a rough start. But along with anything it just takes time and experience to slowly start picking those up.
Adam, I totally agree. I know some people who were forced to learn new things they didn’t really want to know how to do—but there was no one else to do them! I bet the woman in the NYTimes article who started her little Greek restaurant didn’t anticipate spending an entire day doing paperwork…but it’s the reality.
Coming from an agency creative department, I definitely miss the banter, social interactions… and even the occasional Nerf dart to the head… but in the end, the work I’m doing now is more fulfilling.
Do what you love; do the best you can, and hopefully the money bit will follow.
“You’re bills don’t stop coming just because your freelance paychecks are sometimes irregular.”
Should be “Your bills…”
(And yes, I’m a freelance editor.)
Thanks!
I find that the hardest part is just trying to find a continuous stream of projects to do that are exciting and interesting to me. Been using http://www.webfreelancing.com and http://www.thefreelancefeed.com which seem to help.
Have you looked into signing up for the FreelanceSwitch job board?
I am a travel blogger and a full-time secretary to the board of a state college. I have been wanting to try freelancing work with focus on writing but no breaks for me. I have tried ODesk, it did not work.
I wanted to be able to give more time for myself above all else. also, someone, I wanted something that will bring me to places for me to blog about it.
can anyone of you help me with some advice? I got a PhD in Education and wanting to try it out as a freelancer.
I turned to full time freelancing in July this year after working for a big corporation for a year and small ones before that. While working I spoiled my health even though I was being paid quite handsomely. Now, I am earning 1/3 of what I was getting as a full time employee but I have my health back and flexibility of working when I feel productive. Sure it has its own set of problems like time management, doing everything yourself, financial insecurity but at the end of the day what counts is that I have my freedom and I don’t have a over bearing boss who decides how I work.
I will only go back to full time employment when I am in a grave situation.
It’s definitely not easy to consider leaving the relative security of a full-time job for freelancing. I did it myself when my employer, after over 10 years of no cutbacks or layoffs, suddenly instituted a 2-week rotational layoff of all employees (except management, of course). This meant that all employees were thrust into a situation where they worked 2 weeks a month and claimed unemployment pay for the other 2 weeks – the end result being all employees lost a percentage of their wages every month, and there was always one week a month where you had NO income at all, because you were waiting for the unemployment check to come. For those of us already living paycheck to paycheck, this was a budgeting nightmare – not to mention the issues for parents of young children in daycare. I had been freelancing as a VA on a part time basis for a few months already when the cutbacks and layoffs occurred, so I took advantage of my next 2-week layoff period to pull in as many clients as possible – and I didn’t go back to my job when the layoff ended.
I work very long days – longer than I’ve ever worked in my life – and I don’t make as much as I made at my regular job. I don’t have health insurance at this point. Some weeks, I have a huge amount of money coming in, and other weeks, it’s like someone turned off the “money tap”. But I love the life I’m living. No one can lay me off. I am the captain of my own ship, and I make the rules. I can work as much or as little as I want, when I want. I can take on clients outside the US if I want to work evening or overnight hours, or I can restrict my work to the daylight hours. I have fantastic clients, and pride myself on building not just business relationships, but friendships – giving clients that little extra that keeps them coming back.