The Benefits of Freelancing
Welcome to the Freelancing Marketplace Podcast. This is our second episode and today we’re gonna be talking about the Benefits of Freelancing as well as getting started with the freelancing series. We will discuss five benefits that I experienced and have seen in other freelancer’s lives as well. At the end of this episode, we’re going to be talking about the Freelancing Tip of the Week and some key takeaways that we can apply right away to our freelancing and our businesses.
So, the Benefits of Freelancing are the personal benefits that I have noticed, or I have lived and experienced myself, and have seen in the lives of freelancers. These are the five things that I’m going to mention to you guys. Because in a world that we’re living right now, there’s the balance bunk, where you can have the reality of work-life balance, such as pursuing something you’re passionate about. It may be your family or your business, where there are always trade-offs. If you’re pursuing your business, you’re going to compromise a little bit on your family. And If you’re going to follow your religious activities, it might be that you’re compromising social activities. They’re saying, or the world is believing right now that the work-life balance is a bunk. It’s not real, and it’s hype. It’s something that many people are saying, but it’s not a reality that we can all live into or live with it. However, I would say that it is possible with freelancing. The work-life balance is something that I have been experiencing with freelancing.
However, I can say, I’ve experienced that myself, that work-life balance is possible. Now, I’m going to discuss why it is possible to be freelancing. With freelancing, a new work-life balance is possible. Since you are working right in the comfort of your own home or in places where you’d like to work, there are benefits that we’re going to be talking about. And you have the opportunity to pursue your dreams and blossom on the things that you’d like doing; maybe being a blessing to your customers or your clients, being an athlete, voice or being the heart or the mind of particular challenges in your community, or a voice when it comes to
certain issues that the world is facing right now. You can do all of these things when it comes to your family, work, community, and passions when you are a freelancer.
So number one, when we’re talking about the Benefits of Freelancing, I would like to highlight “personal freedom.” This is the number one benefit that I’ve experienced for the past ten years of working remotely as a business owner, social media manager, SEO strategist, and digital marketing expert. I have been working remotely, and personal freedom is something that I enjoy in freelancing. I’m able to cultivate the cultures and the values that I’d like to see in my family and be intimate with my marriage. I’m able to go for intentional parenting. In the process, I can create an impact on the community that I’m helping. I am blossoming with my confidence and self-worth because I am not just a woman or a housewife. I also have all of these titles. My clients are usually not just local clients but also those with businesses and brands worldwide. I am not stuck to the world’s standard as a woman or as a wife when it comes to “personal freedom.” Also, I am not limited as a person. I can blossom, grow, be who I am, and create opportunities that I’d like to embrace myself. I can define my direction and how I’d like to see the world around me. I can define the same world that I’d like to live in, maybe with the family that I want to see in the future, maybe with my marriage, parenting, self-worth, and impact. This is the “personal freedom” that I’m talking about when it comes to one of the Benefits of Freelancing.
Another benefit is “time freedom.” As a teacher by profession, I mentioned in the previous episode that I couldn’t see myself in the nine-to-five situation or scenario. I always felt like I wanted to taste food and experience culture and be out there and experience the fullness of life in the different scenarios in the world. And I couldn’t see that in the nine-to-five situation. I have nothing against people working the nine-to-five lifestyle, but I really couldn’t fathom the life. I felt like it’s limited. So the beauty of freelancing is I can work anytime I want. As a mom, I can define the various niches or expertise that I can focus on. And what helped me before was social media because I don’t have to be at a specific time when the office in Ireland or the US is also open. I can work and schedule everything in my own flexible time and be there when reporting, ensuring that the deadlines are met and the quality is sustained. There’s excellence in my work, and I can balance my parenting, my time with family, and my homeschooling. So there’s “time freedom.” I can choose the contracts that will benefit me with my chosen lifestyle and select the hourly rate. If I’m going to be working, I can choose the arrangements that will solidify that choice of lifestyle. So I can go ahead and work from Monday to Friday and travel or spend time with family on weekends. I can do that because, with freelancing, there is “time freedom.” I can choose the very flexible time that will sustain me in my choice on how I’m going to live my life. With a nine-to-five, I have to be there on time. I have to catch a taxi. It’s not cost-efficient.
With a nine-to-five, I don’t have the choice because I need to be in an office by a specific time. So in the Philippine setting, it needs to be that you’re there before 9 am, or sometimes even 8 am. So you have to wake up as early as six or 5 am. The commute is sometimes one hour to three hours back and forth. And you have to be there around nine hours because there’s a one-hour break in between for lunch. So imagine a lifestyle spent in that scenario. Imagine that you are in that job for 20 or 30 years, sometimes even 50 years for other people.
So basically, most of your life is spent working and sustaining when it comes to family needs.
We have this quote that we work to live. It’s not the other way around. So with freelancing, this is the beauty of it because you can manage your time. For example, you have a client, and you’re working full time with 40 hours per week. And you happen to finish everything in three days. So that’s an indicator that you can add probably two or three more fixed jobs that will require work according to your own pace. And when you complete, you’re getting paid, or you can go for a 50-50, 50% payment before the contract starts and then afterward the rest of the 50% so you can manage the contract, time, and your life. You can manage the life that you like because, in freelancing, there is “time freedom”. That’s our second benefit for the topic that we’re talking about here in the Benefits of Freelancing.
Before going further and discussing the other three benefits, here is our freelancing Tip of the Week. This week’s freelancing Tip of the Week is “Growing Your Online Presence.” Suppose you’re a freelancer struggling with your hourly rate, inbound marketing, and getting clients. In that case, I can share one tip with you to keep clients coming, that is to give work samples or portfolios online. It will be just swift and will also help the clients when it comes to matching or checking if you’re a perfect fit or not. You go ahead and set up your freelancing and grow your authority and your expertise online.
Now back to our discussion on the Benefits of Freelancing. You probably have 50,000 debt somewhere or 10,000. Or you go into this routine of owing someone and then pay. When the payment is there, or you’re in this routine, you probably owe someone money before the salary comes in. And when your salary comes in, most of it goes into your debt, or sometimes you cannot pay your debt for a year. We were in that lifestyle before, like, we would be this one day millionaire when the salary comes. But towards the end of the month, we were already eating sardines because we couldn’t afford meat or delicious foods. We’re running out of money, and all we have in our pockets is just a fair budget, or sometimes even we would go to the community store and just list. Afterward, we owe the community store buckets of money, and we pay them when the salary comes in. This is the usual financial scenario for most of the nine-to-five employees struggling with financial management.
When it comes to freelancing, however, it’s a blessing because you’re earning in dollars. Thus, even if you’re going to have one client and work 40 hours for the client per week and paid at least $5 per hour, you’re earning at least 30,000 pesos if you’re in the Philippines.
This means that it is mainly above the average of many people working in the office who probably receive P10,000, P15,000. That’s double the monthly salary, and you’re just at home. So you’re not spending as much on your commute, eating outside, buying dresses or clothes when it comes to being in the office.
Suppose you don’t have a uniform and other expenses. In that case, the main costs are basic home ones like food, clothing, electricity, and water, and do work expenses, like your computer updates, or probably applications or software and the internet.
I have seen many freelancers who improve the quality of their lives. At the end of one year of freelancing, they’re able to buy cars, able to get started with their homes or dream houses, and they’re able to travel here and abroad. And, of course, that means being a blessing to the people around you as well. May they be your family members, relatives, or friends. In my own experience, we were able to get out of debt, purchase properties, build the home of our dreams, and purchase everything from the refrigerator to AC to cars to everything in the house from the blessings of freelancing. This is our third benefit right here. You can experience “financial freedom.”
The fourth benefit is “freelancing is the future of work,” and it’s going to be beneficial for you when you get started. Many people work nine-to-five jobs, the work and the tasks are very routine, and there is no advancement in the digital revolution. There’s no growth, and it’s limited when it comes to your growth and self-improvement. Are you growing as a person with your self-improvement and even your career improvement? It’s very limited unless you are one of the favorites when it comes to the people on top and seeing real value in you. Hence, you’ll be able to send to training and seminars, and you learn your process. But suppose you are one of the ordinary employees. All you have to do is, do the routine activities, and that’s it. With freelancing, there are constant improvements you are setting yourself into the future of work; maybe automation, maybe anything digital or robotics. You’re learning new things. When I started freelancing, I only did real estate tasks. I only knew real estate virtual assistant status and online bookkeeping. We were managing the client’s MLS, BPO, bookkeeping. We were using QuickBooks. And by then, social media, SEO, and digital marketing were very new. But in the process, especially when I went home-based, I learned all of these things because my client gave me all of the training materials and other opportunities. So the future work was at hand. I’m able to empower myself with what’s happening in the world; I’m not stagnant. Because with freelancing, we’re able to learn skills relevant in the next few years.
The fifth benefit is “unlimited opportunity.” And yes, because this is the future of work, it has a lot of opportunities. Also, because this is online-based, and we are doing this remotely, this is the digital revolution right here. So you can achieve a lot of opportunities. Maybe you’re a freelancer today. But tomorrow, you are a business agency, partner, or owner. Perhaps you’re going to start your own digital marketing agency. Maybe you get to hire and train people. If you are a business owner, probably, you’re more advanced when it comes to the rest of your competition because you are getting all of this digital marketing. If you’re a business owner, maybe you will be more advanced than your competition because you embrace all of these freelancing solutions. If you’re a marketer, you know the insights, machine learning, and you’re leveraging all of these and your business because of freelancing. And because we are in the digital revolution, there are unlimited opportunities. We can go into online TV, robotics, podcasts, merchandise, e-commerce; who knows what’s going on the next day. And who knows what’s going to happen in the next ten years. Right now, some companies are planning to go to Mars and build a community there. There are AIs that are managing and performing like human beings. They are adapting human behaviors. So because you are online and in the remote world here in freelancing, you can also adapt, achieve and innovate yourself into this and situate yourself for more opportunities.
So these are the five benefits that we have been talking about to debunk the balance. The five benefits that we have been talking about are “personal freedom,” “time freedom,” “financial freedom,” “freelancing is the future of work,” and “unlimited opportunities in freelancing.” They are today’s key takeaways.
I want to read this quote by Steve Jobs, saying, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. They have no respect for the status quote. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can do is to ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius because people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.” I love this quote. And I would like to leave this with you guys as a takeaway because freelancing is not that common and not that accepted. It’s not the current standard right now. But this is the future of work right here. The gig economy is growing 30% as an industry, and positioning yourself in the freelancing marketplace will re-leverage you, as a freelancer or business owner, or marketer. Let’s be the square pegs in the round holes. Let’s be the misfits, the crazy ones who are believing in the freelancing industry. Once this is professionalized or standardized, we are the ones that would define what freelancing is. It’s because we are the ones who are crazy enough to get started and believe in this industry.
That would be all for this episode. In the next episode, I will discuss how to get started as a freelancer or a virtual assistant. So go ahead and share this with everybody. Feel free to comment and make sure that you subscribed. And let everyone know what’s happening here to leverage themselves when it comes to the freelancing marketplace. Thank you very much for listening. I will see you in the next episode. Bye, and bless you today.