So it’s been a little over a month since I left my full time job and made the jump to work on my website http://www.cheapdateideas.ca on more of a full-time basis while I do freelance work on the side.

When I decided to make the jump, I thought it was best (and by best, I mean the most “risk averse way”) to follow my dreams by doing some freelance to augment my income and more importantly, free up time during the day to work on the project.  I had effectively bumped myself down from full-time to part-time work.  I say I’m “risk averse” because I haven’t truly cut the umbilical cord… yet.

It’s funny that I didn’t give much thought on how hard and scary it initially is when you start doing your own thing.  We’ve been conditioned to follow what we’re told to do, have a schedule set for us, have designated breaks, when to eat, when to shit – so to “break free” is a bit scary when  that’s all you know. 

It’s definitely a challenge when you have to be your own boss, be accountable, set your own deadlines, create, iterate, connect, and all that other stuff to make things happen to make your fledgling venture the best chance possible to not only survive, but thrive – all the while “following your dream.”

So why freelance to fund your start-up in the first place?

Freeing up and controlling your time:

Whether or not your start-up needs much funding to get going, what you really need is time.  The time to create your product, service or content (going forward, we’ll refer it to simply as “product”) is what will drive it your venture forward and gain traction.  Time, persistence, energy/effort and patience are the most valuable resources that will get you going in order to build momentum.  When you do freelance, you might be working in short sports to make enough money to live off of while developing your product yourself or outsourcing it to third parties.

You dictate when and how you work with the time leftover from freelance - that’s where you make the real gains and do some real damage when working on your product.

Controlling your finances and creating value:

When you go freelance, you have to carry your own weight.  You get paid for exactly the amount of perceived value that you provide through your freelance work.  No resting on your laurels, or having a recurring salary that is deposited into your bank account every two weeks.  If you don’t deliver what you’ve promised, you don’t get paid.  Simple as that.  However, if you’re efficient at what you do, you can get paid more hourly in “Relative Income, as opposed to “Absolute Income”, which is what we’re used to.

To illustrate what I mean, I want to quote Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Workweek on page 36:

Absolute income is measured using one holy an inalterable variouable: the raw and almighty dollar…. Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and  time, usually hours.Let’s look at the real trade.  Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year, $2,000 for each week of 50 weeks per year, and works 80 hours per week.  Jane Doe t hus makes $25 per hour.  John Doe, however, makes $50,000 per year, $1,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, but works 10 hours per week and hence makes over $100 per hour.  In relative income, John is four times richer.

 So when you make enough from freelance work to sustain your lifestyle as opposed to pouring in hours while experiencing the drudgery of the rat race, the time left over is poured into your venture.  This is when you can do some real damage in the long run and actualize your dreams of creating a profitable venture.

In terms of finances, I’m assuming that most people who embark on this journey of being an entrepreneur are bootstrapping every single step of the way and keeping expenses as low as possible.  There are some elements of sacrifice involved, which may entail living frugally and/or moving back to your parents to save on rent and the like, but we’ll save that for another post :)

As for “Creating Value”, it might be useful for how you’ll be making money once you get traction from your website, that’s when you should begin to work out your business model.  I won’t expand on this in this post, but it helps to have some sort of idea of how you’ll be creating value and generating cashflow when you start getting traction on your product.

Habits & Rituals

I think cultivating and having empowering habits and rituals are crucial to being able to sustain you energy levels in the long run to execute on your vision.

Some areas that I think are most important in my experiences so far are:  Time Management, Measuring your progress, and Taking breaks.

Time management – this can mean anything from figuring out whether you’re a night owl or early bird, and what the ideal times for you are.  After trying to the longest time, I found out that I work best in staggered bursts of productivity throughout the day from 10 AM – 1 PM and then a second go from 5 PM and 12 AM.  Figuring out what the times you’re the most productive will only help you in the long run.  Using productivity systems like GTD method or Tony Robbins’ “RPM system” definitely help in this regard.

Also, keeping in mind the two laws of productivity can help aid you in your mission as well, namely: Pareto’s Law (or 80/20 Principle) and Parkinson’s Law.  These two “laws” work synergistically, where in the former by focusing on the “vital few” (ie 20%), you produce 80% of the results, and the in the latter, by simply attaching a concrete deadline you can supercharge your productivity.  Also, you can use free apps like FocusBooster that use the “Pomodoro Technique” which is a variant of Parkinson’s Law to produce more work in a shorter time by attaching something as simple as an alarm that denotes a deadline.

Measuring your progress - this can be anywhere from keeping a journal in your Moleskine, tracking your “key success factors” on spreadsheets, or simply tracking your traffic through free web analytics platforms like Google Analytics and continually setting goals that tie into the overall purpose of your product.

Taking Breaks - this was probably one of the more abstract concepts that I’ve learned in the last few months, after first reading about it in The Art of Learning and most recently in The Power of Full Engagement.  By taking breaks at regular scheduled times, you can actually increase your output by allowing your body and mind to sustain your energy levels.  As an entrepreneur, sustaining your energy level is paramount in being a peak performer and crucial to execution.  Everything is “GO! GO! GO!” so having energy reserves that are continually replenished through breaks (no matter how short) are absolutely essential to your productivity and overall quality of your life.

Purpose

This is probably the most important of the bunch - the BIG question of why so to speak.  If you don’t know what your purpose of why you’re going freelance in the first place, you’re better off not even starting to begin with.  Figure this out first as it’s the foundation of what you’re doing. There has to be some sort of compelling reason of why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place.  You should probably get a feel for what problem you want to solve and how you will do it better than anyone else out there.  Sometimes it takes the form of a hunch, where you continually test, test and then test some more until you’re certain that something might stick.  But even then, that’s never a guarantee of success.

Also, you have to remember that freelancing is only a temporary solution to keep you financially afloat.  Once you getting cash flow, you’ll start to slowly cut away from your freelance gig and eventually cut away from it completely because the whole point of freelancing was to make enough money to allow your business to stand on its own longs to sustain itself and grow from there.

Closing thoughts

I’m lucky that the income I get from for my freelance gig rivals my previous salaried job, which allows me to sustain pretty much the same lifestyle.  I was already living frugally and I moved back home, so that definitely keeps expenses low.

I feel especially lucky to have been able to find this job through my brother who has been hustling hard himself, but in another realm - getting into the corporate world.  I’m really proud of him, but that’s a whole other story.  Anyway, this freelance position allows me to focusing on creating original content, driving traffic and applying what I’ve been learning in my Web Analytics course at UBC.

Only now I’m only beginning to gain traction and get a real feel for what content works and what doesn’t work in the dating niche.

Although it may be “risky”, I’m learning lots, having a ton of fun and applying what I learn.  At the end of the day, I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier.

Disclaimer: I’m writing in the context of internet startups that require no physical inventory.  There is nothing really “tangible” to the service or product itself except how it solves problems in real life, like saving money or creating entertainment value.