Freelance Smackdown: Day 14 Update (With “Secret”-Busting Goodness)

For those just joining us, I called out Christine O’Kelly to put her Freelancing Guide to the test for 30 days and build a $1000-$2000 per month part time revenue stream. These are the continuing adventures …

Today’s post is going to cover:

• The Last 7 Days of Freelance Smackdown Activity
• What’s Coming Up For The Next 14 Days
• The Magic of Working For Less Than You Want
• How To Use The Magic For Fun And Profit
• What To Do When You’re Starting From Scratch

The Last 7 Days of Freelance Smackdown Activity

‘Tis Friday once more, and I’m closing in on the end of Freelance Smackdown: Week Two. Numbers are a little skewed because I didn’t actually do much freelance writing (less than $100 incoming cash this week). But the good news – I locked in about $1,500 worth of writing assignments to be spread out over the next 45 days.

February’s total for part time freelancing since I read the eBook is $594.25, though (again), to be technical, only $229.50 of that was after the call-out. It’s been a good month for this part-time experiment, and I want to thank all of you for your support so far.

A special not to all people who have commented/emailed me without getting a response: I’m not ignoring you. You’ll hear from me soon.

What’s Coming Up For The Next 14 Days

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about how to move forward as a long-term part-time freelancer. By “long-term part-time” I mean I’m not looking to leave my day job anytime in the near future – I’m freelancing simply to generate a second stream of income. Effectively, I guess I’m giving myself a raise.

But because I’m not aiming to do this full-time, that gives me an enormous amount of flexibility when it comes to how I want to evolve. I don’t have to reactively do certain things just to make ends meet, so I’m free to choose what I want to work on, and what I don’t. Having spent 15 years in the corporate arena, I’m not used to that, so it’s interesting to get used to the idea.

Of course, I didn’t feel this way before last week when I was trying to think of the fastest path to making lots of money. If you haven’t been following the Smackdown, you can read about why I decided that wasn’t my optimal path. Or I can sum it up for you: it was simply easier to leverage other people to find the work for me, and let them take a cut.

I won’t make as much (short term) from this strategy, but it has given me a valuable asset: a secure cash flow for the next 45 days. I’ve essentially booked 90% of the hours I have available to freelance, and the $1,500 that’s coming in over that time meets my goal perfectly. However, it didn’t come without a price – it’s essentially easier, lower-paying work. Not what I want to do long term, but it’s what I’m doing for the next 45 days.

So why did I book 90% of my time with lower paying work, when I could go running after more lucrative jobs like sales page copywriting, which people routinely bill out $100 or more per hour for? Because doing this is magical. Really.

The Magic Of Working For Less Than You Want

There’s no magic in dreaming of making more money, regardless of what The Secret tells you (”Secret” lovers, please refrain from flame wars in the comments). Dreaming doesn’t make things happen. Action does. And I’ve learned from experience two things that seem contradictory at first glance:

• Every hour you spend planning saves you five hours of implementation. In other words, Ready, Aim, Fire.
  
• It’s more important to pull the trigger than to overplan and overanalyze. In other words, Ready, Fire, Aim.

Don’t these two statements contradict each other? Yes, of course they don’t. Yes, they are polar opposites of each other when looked at one at a time. But if you do them both, and you do them in the right order, they work hand in hand for magical results. Here’s what I mean.

Overplanning something you’ve never done before doesn’t guarantee success. It might just get you a very carefully crafted plan that won’t work. Think of all the times you planned something out in detail, or worked hard to get what you wanted, only to find out it wasn’t what you wanted at all. This is what happens when you do Ready, Aim, Fire, 100 percent of the time.

Sometimes, out of fear of failure, we get stuck in Ready, Aim, Fire mode forever. Except we spend all our time in the Aim phase, because we’re waiting until we get things perfect before we take action. That’s a recipe for slow (or no) success.

On the other hand, when you just pick a direction, pull the damn trigger and take action, you get a result – you get something. You’ve done the Fire part. And you can look at your result and see if it’s what you really wanted. It it is, continue. If it isn’t, now you have more clarity on what you really want. And you have it immediately.

And there’s a balance. Use Ready, Aim, Fire just to make sure you’re firing in the general direction of where you want to be, and then use Ready, Fire, Aim to rapidly figure out how to get closer to the target (or more importantly, if you need a different target entirely). And do it fast.

This isn’t that different than a lot of people’s experiences in college. You choose X as a major, take some core classes, decide that you don’t really want to do X, so you choose Y instead. Y doesn’t do it for you, so you switch to Z, and so on. By trying something you quickly ferret out what you do and don’t want by experience, something you can’t do when planning on paper.

And here’s why this is magical. When you’re just planning what you think you would like to do, there’s not necessarily an internal pressure to get it done. But when you’re doing something and you don’t like it, you have a real incentive to change. And you magically have the motivation to take more action. And action is the true currency that gets you to your goals.

If I know I can earn $X an hour doing freelance writing, but I don’t know how to attract clients who are willing to pay that, I might not take action. But if I work for one quarter of $X, I have a magical incentive to change, because I can look at my workload and say, “Crap, I can cut 40 hours a week down to 10 if I just figure this stuff out!” And off I go. And off you’ll go, too.

So that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. To say “poof! gimme some motivation, sucka!” And it’s working. But there’s more magic to be had.

How To Use The Magic For Fun And Profit

The key to making this magic trick work is to leave yourself some wiggle room, some time to think about how you’re going to optimize your client-catching ways. This is where you dip back into Ready, Aim, Fire mode. Now you’re planning again, but you’re planing from a smarter frame of mind, because you know more about how the whole system works. Experience is a key advantage when making plans, so it’s good to get it early.

I told you that there was more magic, and sure enough, there is. If you’ve done the Ready, Fire, Aim deal and you’re actually doing something to bring in money, a magical thing seems to happen – you start to suddenly meet people who can help you make more money and help you make more connections. It’s like … like some secret law of attraction draws them to you.

Except it’s really not magical at all, because there is no law of attraction. In truth, it’s just simple human nature. People prefer to work with other people who are active and successful rather than people who just dream. In other words, people look over and say “Damn, that guy is busting his ass and making money! I bust my ass too when I want to make money. Suddenly I feel a strange affinity with him!”

Oooh, magic. Except without the hocus-pocus. Like the old saying goes, “When you’re on fire, people will come from miles around to watch you burn.”

Indeed.

So Here’s Your Homework, If You’re Starting From Scratch

I have a feeling I’ll be breaking this topic out into a bunch of blog posts, so I’ll wrap it up here. If you’re one of those people who, like me, wanted to break into a freelance gig but didn’t know how you could make the big money, jump in and make the small money first. Contact other freelancers who you respect and who have more experience and say up front, “Listen, I’m want to break into this field. I’m willing to work for cheap for a little while to get my feet wet and get used to the business. Outsource some work to me and take your cut.”

If you’re really brave, you could even work for free – but only for someone you truly respect who can show you the ropes in return. I don’t recommend just doing this for anyone, though, because some people will screw you over in a heartbeat. But if you can find a really successful person who has top-notch character, it might be worth it.

Just do something. Ready/Aim just a little bit. Then Fire. Then lather, rinse, repeat. This advice won’t apply to all the readers of this blog, but if it strikes a chord for you, leave a comment below and consider subscribing to this blog if you haven’t already.

You know what to do,

Dave

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