Over a decade, I went from doing grunt work freelancing — data entry, HTML conversion, etc — to charging about $500 an hour as a true consultant.
Freelancers do what they're told. Consultants advise the client on what they should do.
When you start out, it's natural to think you're Doing A Thing (whatever skill you have & want to charge for) rather than Running A Business. I started out thinking "I'm here to make web pages and get paid for it!" and that made it very easy for people to take advantage of me. I would do exactly what the client asked for and then they would complain about it.
By the end of my consulting career, VPs would come to me with their ideas and I'd feel free to say "I'd love to work with you, but that idea won't fly. Here's what you SHOULD do." And they would go with it!
I realized that I could have positioned myself as the expert much earlier on in my career, and saved myself a lot of stress of trying to do every little thing the client asked, no matter how foolish.
The business mindset also means service agreements with initial deposits, work schedule with intermediate payments, kill fees and more.
I now run a product biz — the star being a time tracking SaaS for freelancers http://nokotime.com
Turning my catch-as-catch-can freelance business into a real consultancy is what made me able to charge more, work fewer hours, and have less stressful projects (bc I was the actual boss rather than a tool to be used by the client) and build the SaaS on the side.
Someone else mentioned Freelancember. Guess who made it? Me! Based on all my mistakes and years coaching others to level up like I did. http://freelancember.com
I highly recommend the book The Secrets of Consulting, which is like "the inner game" rather than explicit stuff like contracts, taxes, etc which are covered elsewhere.
Freelancers do what they're told. Consultants advise the client on what they should do.
When you start out, it's natural to think you're Doing A Thing (whatever skill you have & want to charge for) rather than Running A Business. I started out thinking "I'm here to make web pages and get paid for it!" and that made it very easy for people to take advantage of me. I would do exactly what the client asked for and then they would complain about it.
By the end of my consulting career, VPs would come to me with their ideas and I'd feel free to say "I'd love to work with you, but that idea won't fly. Here's what you SHOULD do." And they would go with it!
I realized that I could have positioned myself as the expert much earlier on in my career, and saved myself a lot of stress of trying to do every little thing the client asked, no matter how foolish.
The business mindset also means service agreements with initial deposits, work schedule with intermediate payments, kill fees and more.
I now run a product biz — the star being a time tracking SaaS for freelancers http://nokotime.com
Turning my catch-as-catch-can freelance business into a real consultancy is what made me able to charge more, work fewer hours, and have less stressful projects (bc I was the actual boss rather than a tool to be used by the client) and build the SaaS on the side.
Someone else mentioned Freelancember. Guess who made it? Me! Based on all my mistakes and years coaching others to level up like I did. http://freelancember.com
I highly recommend the book The Secrets of Consulting, which is like "the inner game" rather than explicit stuff like contracts, taxes, etc which are covered elsewhere.