How do I start freelancing? This is a question that I get asked from people in high school all the way up to having 10, 15, 20 years of work experience. So, in this video, I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step guide. And don't worry if you don't have a ton of work experience because it can actually be a secret advantage of yours if you know how to use it properly, which I'll get into later in the video. Hi, my name is Tina, and I've been doing freelancing for the past 7 years. I've also hired over 30 freelancers and interviewed hundreds of at this point. I've hired people from entry-level to top-level executives, consultants, software engineers, data scientists, tutors, people in ops, assistants, you name it. I also run a program called Lonely Octopus, where I teach people AI and data skills to work on real freelance projects. So, I've also trained many freelancers. In this video, I'm going to cover a step-by-step guide.

to get started freelancing, including resources and some tips and guidelines for how to set up a company, how do you price yourself, how do you negotiate, and how to set up systems to continuously source projects. This is basically everything I learned in the past 7 years, and I'm going to give it all to you right now. I'm honestly pretty jealous because I wish I had a step-by-step guide like this when I was first starting out. So, all right, let's get to it. This is Ibrahim. Hello, everyone. I am Ibrahim, and we work together on Lonely Octopus, as well as freelancing and contracting jobs. He's had experience in teaching hundreds of students and building all sorts of applications, all the way from mom-and-pop shops to huge corporations worth billions of dollars. But when I first met him, he was still a tiny Ibrahim who had just graduated from his master's degree with absolutely no experience. This was back in 2021, where he was part of the study community that I started, where I would live stream

myself studying, and then track my progress on a Google spreadsheet. As time went on, more and more people joined the community and also started using the Google spreadsheet to track their study progress, which was amazing and so much fun. But because there were so many more people joining, the spreadsheet just got bigger and bigger, and it also got slower and slower until one day it just crashed completely. So Ibrahim noticed this, and he created a website to replace the Google spreadsheet. It solved the problem, but it wasn't the best website, and there were still some issues with it. But the key here is that he didn't ask; he just did it and then sent it to me. When I saw it, I was like, Oh, this is really great, and then I also gave him some feedback, which then he implemented immediately. And with those improvements, the website became our official Community website. A couple of months later, I had a contract job in which I was trying to hire someone to build a website, so I immediately asked Ibrahim if he wanted to do it, in which he accepted, and the rest was history.

years later, we are now business partners. So, the reason why it worked really well, in addition to a little bit of luck, of course, is the fact that he tapped into his unfair advantage, which is a skill or talent that sets someone apart. For him, he had two clear unfair advantages. The first one is that he knew the basics of how to code, and the second is that he's very fast at figuring out how to do things. So, because of these unfair advantages, he was in a really good position to build that website, even though he had no relevant experience. He knew enough code to get started, but I later found out this is actually the first website he's ever built. Um, but because of his ability to learn things really fast, he figured it out, and he was able to build it. When I gave him feedback, he was also really quick to learn how to implement that feedback, and that's how the website became a success. Of course, if you already have work experience, one of your primary unfair advantages is the work experience that you have. But even if you don't have

extensive work experience where, like Ibrahim, you had absolute zero work experience, you still do have unfair advantages. These can be personality traits like being very compassionate, being very likable, patient, detail-oriented. They can also be domain expertise where skills like coding, drawing, woodworking, inherent assets like if you're very beautiful, you're tall, you have a lot of money. These are all different unfair advantages. If you're not sure, or if you want to dive a little bit deeper into your unfair advantage, I recommend checking out this book called The Unfair Advantage. It's really helpful. And if you really, really, really have no idea, I recommend asking your mom. Seriously, I asked my mom this, and she was like, You've pretty much been good at learning things and talking about stuff since you were like 2 years old. And then she also told me I have commitment problems. I don't know if this is like an Asian mom thing, but if they say something nice about you, they also have to say something not so nice as well. Anyways, using your unfair

advantages as a guideline. Pick a rough area that you want to start freelancing in. For example, maybe if you know how to code, maybe something in data or software. You're patient and good at a specific subject, maybe tutoring. And you're good with your hands, maybe a woodworking kind of assistant situation. If you're personable and detail-oriented, maybe an executive assistant or a virtual assistant. Don't worry about making your domain too specific because the next step is to actually define things clearly and transform your nfir advantages into a marketable skill and portfolio. This video is brought to you by Posit, whose mission is to create open-source software for data science, scientific research, and technical communication. They build a lot of cool open-source free products, which I've talked about before, like Shiny to quickly and easily build an interactive web app, Cal, which is great for programmatically creating documents, showcasing your projects and dashboards, and just displaying information in an organized, aesthetically pleasing fashion. I actually also made an accompanying resource for this video using Cordal.

because I'm going to be covering a lot in this video, so it would be useful, I guess, if you have it all in one place. You can check it out; I'll link in the description. It's completely free. Anyways, another product that I want to introduce to you all today is Posit Connect for Enterprise. A really common challenge, especially if you're working with sensitive data, tight security, or just strict IT, is that you would build your project right, but after building your project, you also need to present it to your stakeholders in a way such that the data and analytics are still secure. That is where Posit Connect comes in to help you deploy, share, and manage all the analytics products that you and your team build, all in one secure, scalable, and easy-to-manage location. With Posit Connect, you can rapidly and securely deploy anything that you build in Python with Streamlit, Dash, Bouquet, FastAPI, Shiny, Flask, Quarter Reports, and other APIs. It comes with all the bells and whistles to support it and enterprise requirements. You can try Posit Connect for free for 3 months using

this link over here also linked in description. Now back to the video. Let me tell you about the hot dog stamp problem. If you've ever gone to some event at a venue outside a venue, there's usually always a line of hot dog stands with people selling hot dogs. All of the hot dog stands are essentially the same, like they literally look the same. The person who's making them has about the same hot dog-making skills, and the hot dogs themselves are also of the same quality, and they're all the same price too. You see, this is not a good situation to be in because the only determining factor for if someone is going to come to your hot dog stand to buy a hot dog as opposed to someone else's hot dog stand is chance. You see, this analogy actually extends very well into the freelancing world too. No matter what kind of freelancing you choose to do, the majority of people are like these hot dog stand people. They are very, very similar to each other. There's nothing really distinct or unique about them to attract clients. They're pretty much

all interchangeable with each other. So, that's why the next step of successfully starting freelancing is to refine your freelancing offering so that it maximizes your unfair advantages. For example, if you're one of those hot dog stand owners, another unfair advantage that you might have is maybe you're very attractive. So, seriously, you could lean into that. For example, literally this street food vendor lady over here went viral for being really hardworking and making good street food, but also for being very attractive. Okay, maybe unfortunately you're not very attractive, but maybe you know how to dance. So, while you're making a hot dog, you can do a little dance while you're at it, and people are going to be attracted to that. Something that's different than all the other hot dog stands. For example, if you have experience as a software engineer, you're probably going to choose software engineering freelancing or consulting. Maybe you're also really fast at learning new technologies, so you go and learn how to do AI product development and distinguish yourself from the pool.

of unspecialized software consultants. If you want to become a freelance video editor and you really like playing games, then you can try to specialize in video editing for gamers. Want to be a virtual assistant and you also have a marketing degree? Focus on clients who have something to do with marketing. I really encourage you to be patient here, do some self-reflection, think carefully about what you can do that makes you stand out. It can save you months, if not years, of failures because if you're competing your weaknesses against other people's strengths, you're just not going to have a good time. In addition to reading The Unfair Advantage, I also highly recommend you check out the book from Cal Newport called So Good They Can't Ignore You. Okay, great. Now that you know what your freelancing services should focus on, this is when you start building up your portfolio. I'm also going to show you how to kill two birds with one stone by simultaneously also landing your first job. You got this. When I was hiring a

freelance editor. I made this post on Reddit, and I got a bunch of different people applying, like at least I think it was like 40 people applying. The first thing I asked for was their portfolio because a portfolio tells you so much about a person. Some portfolios were just absolutely terrible, like I had secondhand embarrassment seeing some of these portfolios. Some portfolios were good, but just like really general, a bunch of different types and styles of videos, but none of them really stood out. By the way, this is exactly why I was stressing earlier about why it is that you need to figure out your unfair advantage and tailor your offerings. Otherwise, you end up in this category. The majority of people end up in this category, which is sort of just meh. But luckily, there were two portfolios that really stood out. The first one, even though at first glance, it feels like there's a lot of different types of videos, but after I looked carefully, I realized that there was this focus on really good pacing and the usage of music and sounds that made the video so

much more engaging and was able to invoke certain emotions. The other portfolio seems to specialize in talking head videos, which is the type of video that I do. So, I interviewed both of them, and I ended up going with the first person because that person's skill set with the music and the pacing was something that complemented my own skill set. And the second person, he was good, and I would have chosen to work with him if I was just starting out on my YouTube Journey. Um, but because I've been doing this for a while, we had a lot of overlaps in our skill sets. Anyways, my point being here is that really, really focus on making a good portfolio. And while you're making this portfolio, put yourself in the shoes of your potential client. Ask yourself, based on the type of work I'm going for, what kinds of skill sets and experience would my client want to see. So, this probably sounds like a lot of work, and yes, it kind of is a lot of work. Um, but I do have good news for you. You don't

actually have to just like sit there and work on your personal projects and try to build up your portfolio until you have a bunch of projects in it before starting to look for your first job. Actually, you can build your portfolio while working towards landing your first job at the same time. What? When I first wanted to land a freelance job in coding and software, I was still in college at that time, and I had only taken two introductory to Python courses and had no experience, so naturally, nobody wanted to hire me. So, I did a lot of things. I emailed hundreds of professors asking if I could do a free project for them. I asked my department chair, which was the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, if I could give a workshop to teach students how to use Python to analyze pharmacology data. Honestly, I was still a beginner in Python and data analysis myself, but I still knew more than the pharmacology people, so you know, they still agreed to let me do it. I also asked the engineering club if I could just come and hang around them, and I'll

just do whatever it is that they tell me to do. So, by doing a bunch of these things for free, I was able to fill up my portfolio with these projects. And actually, while working for free for one of the professors, he eventually decided that he would actually give me a paid contract job, which then turned into a full-time job. Two birds with one stone. At the time, there weren't that many online communities, but if there were, I would have probably done something similar to Ibrahim and just gone to build something for some people or redo someone's thumbnail for their video, volunteer to manage someone's Discord community for operations experience. Because operations projects are probably one of the hardest to get on your portfolio just by yourself. By the way, remember at the beginning of the video I said that if you don't actually have a lot of experience, you have a secret weapon, a secret advantage that you can use to your favor. Well, that is the fact that because you're a newbie, people have expectations for you, and more people are willing to give you a chance as long as

you're enthusiastic, and you show them that you really will try your best. On the other hand, having a lot of experience, obviously, is great, but it can also be a double-edged sword when it comes to freelancing. Say, for example, I wanted to start freelancing now, and I've now had 8 years of experience in data and software and content. So, it's great that I have actual experience and the clout of having different degrees and having worked in certain big-name companies. And yeah, yes, objectively speaking, I am able to deliver more value to clients; that is true. However, a very common mistake that I may fall into is thinking that, Oh wow, I already have work experience, so that's going to speak for itself. Yeah, no. Freelancing is like a completely different game. Just because you have experience working at a company and then having all of that does not translate into freelancing. And not just any freelancing portfolio; their expectation is that the freelance projects that you have, they need to be equivalently impressive and deliver.

equivalent value to the positions that you've held at companies, to the work experience that you've had. Like, for example, right now with 8 years of experience, I cannot get away with a project that's like doing preliminary research as a research assistant, or like making some social media posts and posters for a local fundraiser or something like that. So, if you're experienced, you need to make more of an effort and reach out to your network to find something that actually showcases the skill sets that you have. And this leads to the second issue that you may have, which is what is called golden handcuffs. When you're so used to a mid-senior level salary, that when you have an opportunity to do a contract job, you realize that if you convert that to your hourly rate, it's like half or even it's like free work, right? That you're supposed to do. So, you're kind of just like, Oh, that's like not really worth my time. But no, get it into your head that you do need to go through this process.

like if you don't get over this, then you are never going to be able to start freelancing. Like seriously, I have so many friends who are really skilled and say they want to start freelancing, but they just cannot get over this, and they just refuse to take freelance projects that are not at the same salary level as their full-time jobs. Go to schools and ask if you can deliver a workshop or a lecture related to your specific field. You can also try asking your current or previous companies if you can do something for them for free outside of your job description in exchange for having it show up on your portfolio. Ask around if you have any friends or family that have their own business or have decision-making rights in a company to let you start from there. Think along these lines, by the way, treat these portfolio projects like paid jobs, be professional, and over-deliver. There's a chance that if you do a good job afterwards, they may ask you to do another job for them, but paid this time, or even if they don't hire you.

immediately. They may call you in like 6 months or even a year. Another scenario that happens quite often is that that person who you worked for, um, one of their friends, one of their colleagues, may say like, Oh, like, do you know anybody that does like XYZ things? and then remember you who did a really good job and then refer you. Don't count on this kind of thing happening, but it does happen. By the way, if this seems that there's just a lot of information that I am throwing at you right now, do not worry. I got you. I'll also link in the description a little cheat sheet that I made using CTO by posit, an open-source publishing system. In there, I also put some templates and examples of portfolios. These will be especially useful for people who are doing technical projects. It's what CTO specializes in. It's like a much more professional, upgraded way of showcasing your projects compared to, say, just like a GitHub link. Okay, before I talk more about how to manage relationships with

your clients, as well as how to build systems to sustainably source projects. I want to first quickly talk about platforms. I think places like Fiverr or Upwork are fine if you just want to get started, like get some portfolio projects um as fast as possible or land a couple of clients. There's also online communities like Reddit, kind of hit or miss as well. What I would say is like if you want to seriously consider using these platforms as a strategy of getting long-term clients, make sure that you have a skill set that is in demand but really rare, or you're just able to do something way faster or way cheaper than other people, so you basically undercut the market. Otherwise, you don't really have an edge and your margins are really thin. Oh, one thing though, if you are someone from a developing country, you could consider looking at these platforms and just trying them out, because if you want, of course, you land a deal with a company or somebody who's from like Canada, Australia, US, like more developed countries, they are more

likely to pay you more than what you would get in your current country, and it would also expand your network. And if you do a good job and they rehire you or refer you to somebody else, it does expand your network into some of these other places as well, so it's worth considering. But generally speaking, unless you have a location advantage or a skill advantage, I would focus on the strategies we talked about earlier in doing cheaper free labor and then converting them to paid gigs. Okay, so at this point, assuming that you've landed your first project, even your first paid project, you might be thinking like, Oh, what about how do I press stuff like how do I negotiate, how do I make a contract, how do I open up a new company, like things like that. Don't worry, I will get to all of that in a bit. But first, I just want to finish off this final section of the step-by-step guide, which is Building Systems to continuously Source clients. Have you ever heard of a story, the parable called the Hunter and the farmer?

In a small village, there lived a hunter and a farmer. Both sought to provide for their families but had very different approaches. The hunter, skilled with his bow and arrow, would venture into the forest each day, waiting patiently to catch game. Some days he would return with a bounty, and some days he would return empty-handed. His family meals were unpredictable, depending on his daily luck and the availability of animals. The farmer, on the other hand, spent his time preparing the soil, planting seeds, and tending to his crops. Initially, it seemed like he was working really hard for no immediate reward. The hunter would mock the farmer, saying, Why do you waste your time on the land when you could be catching your food directly from the forest? A few months later, winter came, and the hunter started having trouble getting bounty from the forest. The farmer would smile and continue diligently working on his farm. A few months later, his crops were ready to harvest. He was able to harvest all the grains and store them just in time for winter. During the winter, the hunter realized that most of

the animals went into Harbor nation, and he was no longer able to catch Bounty. While the farmer, on the other hand, has a huge storage of grains and food that lasts him this entire winter. And when the following year comes, the system that he built was able to continuously grow more crops and feed his family. What this Parable teaches us is that in the beginning, we can be like the hunter. Like, for example, you are reaching out to a lot of different people and doing whatever you can in order to secure that first freelance job, right? But as you start progressing, you don't want to rely on just, like, people hopefully coming to find you or people you worked with, um, hopefully referring you. Obviously, if it happens, that is great, but we don't want to depend on that. That instead, what we need to start thinking about is building up systems so that we can start sourcing these projects ourselves. So, first of all, still definitely manage the relationships that you're having with your current clients because these people are going to be your Champions.

but you also need to start doing some outreach. The easiest way of doing this is to just attend events, like just show up to events where your prospective clients maybe hang out, and just talk to them, get their LinkedIn information, you know, let them know what you do, and you know, they might hit you up whenever it is that they need someone who has your skill set. One of my most recent contract jobs was for a school, so I'm very interested in the education space. So, I attended this education conference, and I kind of just was there, talked to some people, and then just like went like, Oh, you know, I do this kind of consulting stuff if you ever need anything, and that was it. Wasn't trying to be pushy, um, but a few months later, they got back to me and went like, Hey, Tina, like, we are actually interested in designing an AI system for our school, and I was like, No problem, I got you. But the best return on investment method that you can do to continuously source projects is to start posting things online. You can have

written content. You can have video content. Doesn't really matter as long as you talk about the services that you provide, some of the projects that you've done, and provide educational material. Um, this is something that does take a significant time to get started, not going to lie, and you're going to be like that farmer, um, just spending a lot of time fostering the system. But once you get it up and people start associating you with a certain field, with a certain freelancing skill set, then the contract jobs are going to start flowing. Um, it took me about 6 months to start landing contract jobs through social media after consistently posting a video every single week. But after I started doing that, um, I have a lot of different offers coming in now, like actually way more than I can handle. So, I can now, I get to be picky now and choose what it is that I want to do or I don't want to do. So, I do recommend that you start some sort of content creation. So, this video is probably really, really

really long um, but if you want a guide in terms of how to do content creation, specifically say for freelancing, um, do let me know in the comments, and I can make a video like that. Some books I would recommend are the Emth Revisited, an amazing book about building systems. The Dip is great um, because it helps you push through when you are having a lack of motivation and you're not seeing immediate results. And just for the social media stuff, there's a lot of great free resources out there where you can start learning about how to create content. Okay, last section. I'm going to give you some specific advice and tips for very common questions. Should you set up a company, and how do you set up a company? So, this will vary between country to country. In the US and Canada, you probably want to go in LLC in the US and a C Corp in Canada um. It's super easy. Literally, go online. It takes you like 30 minutes in order to register a company. Honestly, I personally wouldn't worry about this so much until after I

actually land a project. You can also, like, do your first projects and get paid as an individual. It's not the best situation when it comes to, like, taxes and liability and stuff, but those are like future you problems. Just land the actual project first. Pricing, okay, this is something that people also get really hung up on. This is like my little tip, is like if you don't know how much you should be charging, what you can do is that you can ask the client, Hey, what's your budget? Like, what is it that you're thinking about? So, that kind of gives you an anchor point in terms of how much it is that you should be charging. And again, in the beginning, I wouldn't worry so much about it. Like, the fact that you're getting paid at all is already wonderful and amazing, so it's fine if you start off getting underpaid. And as you get more experience and get to be a little bit more picky with your clients, then look more into details about how it is that you can be gauging.

how much to charge related to this is negotiating. My favorite book of all time is called Never Split the Difference. Read that book, read it like three times, and you will know how to negotiate. Setting expectations: sometimes when you're so excited or desperate in order to land a job, you might just end up like agreeing to a bunch of things that you realize afterwards that either you can't deliver or it's just going to like be a ridiculous amount of work. So be excited, but while you're negotiating and before you sign the contract, make sure it's something that you actually can do. Also, a common pitfall is by not specifying the level of support you will provide after the project, especially for technical projects. Some people may come back to you like over and over again for technical support, and that's just like not sustainable. So you need to like very clearly say, I will provide support for 2 weeks, or like x amount of time, where I will provide support for this number of hours, with this number of calls, and

anything beyond that we can talk about maybe like a retainer system where monthly you would pay me a certain amount of money in order to maintain your system, something like that. Always try your best to under-promise and over-deliver. If you think something is going to take you 2 weeks, double that, say it's going to take 4 weeks. Then if you actually get it done in 2 weeks, your client is going to be really happy and be like, Wow, like you know, they were able to get it done even faster. It's a lot better of a situation than saying that you're going to get it done in 2 weeks and then taking 4 weeks to do it. Remember, as a freelancer, your reputation is everything. Protect that at all costs. Okay, what else, what else, common pitfalls. So say there's a client that you're trying to land. The first thing that you should do is do a little bit of research on this client. It is so surprising how few people actually do this. For example, I'm currently trying to

hire a marketing freelancer. So, I interviewed a few people, and so many of them, when they were giving me their portfolios, were telling me about what it is I should be looking at. They were talking about stuff like SEO marketing, talking about how it is that I should be doing certain things on my website, like how it is I should be paying for Facebook ads or something like that. And I'm just sitting there going like, Did you even look at what it is that I do? Because if you did look at what it is I do, you would know that I am a content-first business. So, you not even talking about how to use content in order to do marketing, and you're jumping straight to doing things like SEO and Facebook ads, so that was just like an immediate red flag for me. And you know what? Like, maybe they would have been great people to have on a team, but literally just 10 minutes of research would have gotten you all of that information. Not even 10 minutes, like literally Google my name.

Google the business, and you would have immediately known that this is a Content-Centric business. So, you should not be talking about Facebook ads. By the way, I am still looking for a marketing freelancer for Lonely Octopus. So, if you are someone who is interested in this position, please email us at contact@lonelyoctopus.com. It'll be cool if we end up working together through this video. All right, final piece of advice: set your expectations. You are going to get rejected over and over and over again. Just expect to be rejected and be pleasantly surprised when you actually get something. Too many people just give up too easily. They're like, Oh, I tried to become a freelancer, and I tried to get a client five times, and you know, like, I ended up getting nothing. Well, that's like nothing, right? Keep trying and follow up with people. Sometimes, like, somebody emails me, and I'm just like, Oh, like, I don't know what that is, so I just, like, don't look at it. Um, but

then email me like two times, three times, four times. I'm like, okay, how persistent of you. And then I would look at it and be like, oh, you know, this person is persistent, and they seem decent. And then I would give that person a chance, right? Really, sometimes it's just about sending a couple of follow-ups, and just like that little bit of extra effort can take you a long way. All right, that is all I have for you guys today. I hope this is a helpful video. Leave a comment about what kind of freelancing that you are going to be doing, and I will see you in the next video or live stream.

How To Start Freelancing (a step by step guide)

Hi! My name is Tina and I'm a ex-Meta data scientist. Now I create content and other internet things! 

This channel is about coding, tech, career, and self-study. I love learning new things and my goal is to always minimize effort and maximize outcome! 

I strive to do things in the most efficient way possible and with the highest reward. I basically refuse to do extra work to achieve my goals c: 




How To Start Freelancing (a step by step guide)

How To Start Freelancing (a step by step guide)

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