Read Time = 3 mins
30 days ago I quit my job.
$0 in income… 😬
You see, this all started because I wanted to be a freelance Salesforce consultant part-time (20 hours/wk).
I’d heard the awesome stories about it.
$200,000 a year in income + minimal working hours.
I really wanted that too.
So, I quit my job and put together a 30 day plan on how I was going to do it.
Well… It’s now been 30 days and I managed to go from $0 to $193,000/yr in income.
I wrote down how I did it so you can too.
Let’s get it ↓
THE PLAN
I spent the first 48 hours watching Youtube and reading blog posts.
Remember, I was starting from scratch.
I knew some basics from the little freelancing I had done in the past but it wasn’t anything super official so all this was going to be brand new for me.
Here’s what worked:
Outlining my plan
Having $$$ goals
Setting a deadline
Planning long term
This plan was my guardrail.
I knew who to contact, where to look, and how to present myself.
If it didn’t meet the plan, I dropped it.
THE NETWORKING
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
A saying I’m sure you’ve found to be true in your life.
And like you, I have too.
So true that I’ve literally spent the last 2+ years of my life posting on Youtube, LinkedIn, and Twitter in hopes to meet more like-minded ppl.
Well, for this 30 day plan it paid off big.
How?
All the gigs I landed were passed along to me by someone I had helped in the past who were willing to return a favor.
On top of the gigs I landed - friends from my network also gave me unlimited support on the strategy and tools I would need.
Needless to say…
You’ll never regret networking.
THE TOOLS
I sign my first contract.
“Oh crap” was the next thought I had.
Why?
I didn’t know how to:
Write a contract
Organize my clients
Track my hours
Send over invoices
I mean, I did… but not in a scalable and professional way.
So again, I reached out to contact I became friends with on Linkedin since I knew he had freelanced for 2+ years.
2 tools he recommend:
Workspace
LLC
Workspace is the one stop shop for all things freelance.
Contracts, invoicing, branding, time tracking, clients, projects, proposals, you name it - they got you covered all 100% free for 1 client or less.
LLC would protect me with liability issues AND helpful for taking advantage of tax breaks where I could come tax season.
If you freelance, use these 2 tools.
THE CONSISTENCY
This is a 3 min summarized newsletter post, not real life.
So, don’t let it fool you.
I had plenty of days that nothing happened.
Plenty of days where I was tempted to start looking for another 9-5.
I’m including consistency here b/c too many posts online make things like this seem easy and a piece of cake.
This task was not.
I had to put in my fair share of work to generate opportunities for myself.
Every week I…
Applied to 10 jobs
DM’d 10 recruiters
Interviewed 3 times
Invested money toward it
All while I was making $0 in income…
Burning cash day by day from my savings.
In a lot of ways though this part really helped me.
It helped me because I could look back each week and physically see the effort I was making and the successes and failures to either celebrate or improve.
Whether you freelance or not…
This was a solid remembrance to find your why so you can keep going even when you can’t see light at the end of the tunnel yet.
THE RESULTS
30 days later, here’s what happened.
Three consulting gigs landed.
Total hours = 33
Weekly Pay = $3,725
Annual Pay = $193,700
As you can see I am not 100% within the long term goals I wanted. Ideally I want to increase my pay rate and work less hours.
BUT
Considering I was back at $0 I decided to be flexible in the short term to gain some stability and then work on upping my rates / finding new clients.
That’s it for this week. I hope this added some value to your Saturday. Looking forward to seeing you again next week!