Freelancing is very common in today's "gig economy," and in a way it's a lot like owning a business. The freelancer has to be her own sales force, her own marketing division, her own bookkeeper, etc. Freelancing is essentially owning your own job, which comes with a unique set of challenges. Scott and Mitchell discuss what the freelancer needs to know to develop a successful enterprise.

In most cases, the freelancer does work independently that could be done as an employee at a company. The freelancer, like the employee, trades time for money. This differs from the business owner who executes and manages a business model which can be scaled up with additional employees, raw materials, and so on. Nevertheless, a freelancer is responsible for many of the same bookkeeping requirements, taxes, marketing and sales operations, so it's important to develop a basic operating model and learn to price new business accordingly. An employee, by nature, earns less than the value he delivers to a business (otherwise the business would not stay in business very long!). A freelancer therefore can and should make more money than an employee doing the same job, since he has to pay his own taxes, buy his own equipment, manage his own pipeline of business, and other costs of doing business. 

The freelancer can also make MUCH more money than the employee by establishing himself as an expert in his field, or the go-to person for a specific set of problems. Scott and Mitchell discuss freelance consultants they know who have written white papers, books, articles, and otherwise distinguished themselves as THE guy for a particular job. These consultants secure steady work due to their visiblity and are able to charge very high rates for their work, because they provide a huge value to companies -- those companies don't have to reinvent the wheel in order to solve a problem the consultant has already solved and perfected. With enough experience, these consultants can usually work multiple jobs at the same time, and further increase their earnings by scaling their solutions.

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Mitchell Baldridge

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Scott Hambrick

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