becoming a freelancer saved my life this was me at my full-time job as a data analyst
and this is me now
what happened? i became a freelancer
if it wasn't for freelancing i would have been stuck at a 9-5 job climbing the corporate ladder
dealing with corporate office [ __ ] annoying managers kissing some asses here and there
working my ass off for a four percent raise while inflation is 9.1 percent meaning effectively
i'm losing money every year stressing out for a company that's only focused on maximizing profits
and minimizing costs so i quit i started working as a freelancer and i remember the moment i quit
so clearly i was at my own goodbye party talking to my manager he was a pretty senior manager
and his manager was standing next to him he was basically the CTO of this big corporation
that i don't want to mention the name of it was a multi-billion multinational a big company anyways
i was talking to them and explaining why i quit my job and why i decided to start as a freelancer
i told them eagerly about my new job a three month long freelance project at a big bank in the
Netherlands and when i told them this they kind of started laughing "so let me get this straight
you're going to quit your full-time permanent job for a month long project
are you going to work for a bank in this fragile economy
might not be the smartest risk to take right now..."
and all i could think about was yeah you keep laughing but you have no idea what the bigger
picture is you have no idea this is just part of the big master plan i have for myself you have fun
staying in this rat race working away your lives for this corporation because that's really what
they were doing these senior managers were working 12 hours a day easily they would be the first to
come to the office at around 8 in the morning and they would be the last to leave and around 6
that was expected of them and they would spend the whole day in meetings literally the whole day
the calendars were usually booked three to four weeks in advance you couldn't get a 30 minute
slot to talk to them so when did they actually do some productive work? well in the evening at home
because i would always get a reply to my emails at around 10-11 in the evening or sometimes even
in the weekends so basically they wake up early commute to work sit in useless meetings all day
then commute back home spend two maybe three hours with their family and then work again and they get
to go on a vacation twice a year that's literally their life oh talking about vacation by the way
at this company it was a thing to bring your laptop while on vacation "so i could do some
work in the sun replying to some emails here and there" instead of spending precious time
with their families with their loved ones i just i just don't understand it's like i
don't know if i'm on vacation don't call me don't email me i'm on vacation consequently
it's at this company i realized that i don't want to be a manager anymore i always had this
dream or ambition to become a manager no more anyways back to my goodbye party so
they gave a goodbye speech thanking me for my efforts and my time and wishing me all the luck
on my future endeavors and of course then it was my turn to say something but since i just
came back that day from a trip to Chernobyl of all places i forgot to prepare a goodbye speech
and since i'm really bad at giving speeches anyway and since i didn't want to lie about how inspiring
it was to work for the company because it wasn't i gave a speech that was similar to Joe Pesci's
speech when he received an Oscar and the oscar goes to joe Pesci in Goodfellas
"oh it's my privilege thank you" so after an awesome trip to Chernobyl and a very awkward
speech it was time to start working as a freelancer for this three month long
project for this big bank in holland and it really was a project for just three months
in fact during the interview before i got hired they emphasized this fact they said
don't count on it that your contract will be extended it's just a project for three months
once you're finished you're out and i told them no problem and they even asked me are you sure
you want to quit a permanent full-time job for a freelance project for 3 months and i explained
to them i decided i want to become a freelancer and am fully aware of all the risks nevertheless
i am willing to accept those but was it scary? 100% did i feel like an imposter definitely it
was my first long-term freelance project long term three months but you get the point and i remember
thinking to myself when you get hired as a regular employer the first couple of months are always
used to get to know the business the colleagues to learn about the business processes it takes
time to start adding value to the company but as a freelancer you're hired for a very specific task
and companies expect results almost immediately but flash forward two years and i was still
working there and i've heard this happen so many times before freelancers get hired for a short
term project but end up working there for years which brings me to the first lesson i learned
as a freelancer become a linchpin meaning become irreplaceable in other words become so valuable
that it's costly to replace you you see it costs a company time energy and effort to replace someone
who's already adding value to the company most managers don't like the hassle of the whole
hiring process so if you do a good job chances are you get to stick around for a long time
but after three months our department had to cut budgets because the bank wasn't doing so well
financially speaking and as a freelancer you're always the first one to go out that's the risk
of being a freelancer the risk i was willing to accept those [ __ ] managers were right
"working for a big bank in this economy?" but wait didn't i just tell you i was still working there
after two years yeah because the following happened i had a conversation with my manager
where i told him the following mr manager since you've told me that although i was valuable to
your team you have to let me go because of budget cuts i have a proposal for you instead of working
five days in a week for this project i am willing to continue working just one or two days per week
just to keep the project going until you can find a replacement or someone to hand it over to that
way you cut away 60 to 80 percent of the costs but we can still maintain the project a win-win and he
told me that's a deal so now i at least had some income while i was looking for another job and
through Linkedin i stumbled upon this company that was looking for a part-time data analyst willing
to work two to three days per week perfect so i applied got hired and i was working 50
of my time for this new job an online auctioning platform and the other 50 time still working at
the bank i kept my full income by working two projects simultaneously was it challenging yeah
did i learn a lot from it yeah definitely because now i had two completely different projects i was
working on i learned twice as fast two completely different environments meant double the experience
if i learned a neat trick or something new at one company i could apply it the next day at the other
company and vice versa which brings me to lesson number two i learned as a freelancer you grow
fast as a freelancer you will switch projects and companies more frequently meaning you will
have a way broader experience and skill set than a regular employee working at the same company for
years so the risk you take as a freelancer pays off with the fact that you get to grow your skills
way faster but of course that's not the only compensation for the risk you take as a freelancer
you get paid way more as a freelancer compared to a regular monthly salary and this is where we get
close to why freelancing saved my life this is where it gets interesting i made a video some
time ago where i mentioned my freelance salary in the thumbnail and title i stated that i was
earning about 170 thousand dollars per year at the time and inevitably the doubters and haters
had to share their feelings in the comments i guess it's too hard or complicated for them
to google the hourly rate of a freelance data analyst in that in the Netherlands
and then multiply that by the amount of hours you work in a year and ta-da i guess it's just too far
out of their reality you know the book think and grow rich yeah i think they read the other one
hate and stay poor and what most of these lovely people don't understand is that first of all
as a freelancer you also have way more costs compared to a regular employee first there's the
income tax which is 52 in the Netherlands meaning you basically lose half your salary right away
yay taxes and then there's the fact that you have to pay for your own business insurance
you have to take care of your own pension your own emergency fund for when you get ill
or when you want to go on a holiday you have to pay for your own laptop software licenses
car insurance gas bookkeeper point being that down the line that 170k salary sounds way more
spectacular than it really is but this brings me to lesson number three which is that you do have
more control over your income you can choose your own insurance you get to choose what your monthly
costs consist of and most importantly you choose how you invest your money for when you get older
instead of your employer putting away part of your salary in a 401k you get to invest in whatever you
want and i chose to invest in bitcoin i chose to invest in index funds i chose to invest in myself
and what i mean by this is i chose to buy a camera i chose to buy a microphone i chose to buy a
laptop i chose to buy lightning i chose to follow a couple of courses on videography and filmmaking
on storytelling i chose to start a youtube channel and i also chose to not work one day in the week
as a data analyst and instead use that one day to create videos and get better at it yeah video
which is lesson number four by the way as a freelancer you also have more control over
your time if you want to work four days in a week instead of five you usually can
if you want to go on a vacation you let your manager know that you're going you don't have
to ask your manager and instead of having to work overtime just because your manager asks you
you i close my laptop at five o'clock when i finish the day of work oh you do want me to work
overtime cool no problem i'll send you the invoice for the extra hours later and most importantly you
can quit whenever you want and that's what i did after almost two years of working as a freelance
data analyst i quit my job and i started traveling together with my girlfriend focusing full time on
youtube i chose to reignite my old passion for filmmaking and visual storytelling by starting
my own creative business you see freelancing for a couple of years gave me the resources
to save and invest enough money to quit my job and to at least give myself one year to start
creating something of my own to start a living life on my own terms a life where i don't have
to deal with corporate office [ __ ] a life where my income is not limited by the hourly rate or the
amount of hours i can put in because both have a limit but growing your own business does not and
most important of all sharing my journey and my lessons through my videos has been one of the most
fulfilling things i've ever worked on in my entire life because although working at a bank earns you
a decent amount of money i never found any meaning in working at the bank it didn't feel like i was
living a life of purpose i was just working to get money to pay the bills and i never had the feeling
that i made a positive impact on anyone working there but funny enough i did find meaning in
creating videos and apparently looking through the comments it did make some positive impact
for at least some of you and that to me feels a million times more fulfilling than increasing
the profit of some big corporation working on my own creative business honestly never feels like
work and i've never ever in the last seven eight years working as a data analyst whether it was as
a freelancer or full-time data analyst i've never looked forward to a Monday never on the weekends
did i think can't wait to get back to work on a Monday but working on my own business every day i
work on Sundays because it doesn't feel like work it feels like play and I have a definition for
success that i really like doing work that feels like play fulfills a purpose and gets you paid and
that's what i'm doing right now am i earning as much as i did when i was a data analyst?
no way less but i'm doing something that i actually enjoy doing while traveling the world
with my girlfriend and as i said potentially maybe in a couple of years if i get to grow my channel
i will grow my income but of course there will always be people doubting you telling you you're
a scammer or telling other people they should not take a risk in life to play it safe because they
themselves have failed or straight up laughing at your plans hey i've heard this one before
do you cheers!