Freelancing – What’s It REALLY Like?
Posted by Gabrielle on 27 May 2008 at 07:55 pm | Department: Articles
You’ve heard all the big promises.
“Start your own business and be your own boss!”
“Why work for someone else when the sky’s the limit for your income in your own business?”
“Roll out of bed whenever you want to, and commute to your home office in your pajamas.”
Sounds tempting. But can you really believe these promises?
The truth? Yes and no.
You can have these things, but there’s a little more to it than meets the eye.
Certainly you ARE your own boss when you go freelance. But that also means that nothing gets done unless you do it yourself or hire someone else to do it. Not a bad thing, since you don’t have to answer to anyone and you get to design everything about your business just the way you want it. However, you are also responsible to do far more than just the billable work for your clients!
You get to do the marketing to pull in the clients. You get to take care of all the administrative work to set up and run your business. And you get to do all the strategic planning and decision making to guide your business to success.
Bottom line: You take on a lot more responsibility when you start your own business. So you really should get paid more! But guess who decides how much you’ll get paid?
As far as your income potential, yes, the sky is the limit in that you are not locked into a pay scale dictated by someone else. But how much you actually earn will really depend on how you set up your business.
Will you be charging by the hour? Will you be the only one working in your company? Will you hire subcontractors or even employees? The reality in a service business is, when you’re trading time for money and that is your only source of revenue, there are very real capacity limits. That, in turn, limits how much you can make. After all, there are just so many hours in a day.
This is where planning will make a BIG difference. You must be clear on your expectations of how many hours you will be working, what the market will bear, and how you will generate your revenue.
What about working in your pajamas? You can if you want to. You’re the boss, remember? But will you? Again, that will depend on how you set up your business and the ways you will work with your clients.
If you will be working on a virtual basis – meaning only through the Internet – then sure, you can work in your pajamas and your clients will never be the wiser. But if you plan on meeting your clients face to face or working at their offices to do their bookkeeping, you will likely need to keep normal business hours and wear business casual attire.
So can you believe the big benefits of working in your own freelance business? Absolutely. But it comes down to being very clear on what you want your business to be like and what you’re willing to DO to make it happen.
Here’s my short list of the skills I think are absolutely necessary if you’re serious about starting a successful freelance bookkeeping business, based on my own experience over the past 18 years. (Oh my, has it really been that long?)
- You must be proactive and willing to take the initiative to get the results you want in your business. No one will do it for you.
- You must expect that a steady, paycheck-like income is not guaranteed, and plan accordingly. Especially in the beginning.
- You must be willing to learn new skills on a regular basis. In QuickBooks software alone, there are new features to learn each year, as well as other technology that you must be willing to keep up with on an ongoing basis.
- You must be willing to do what it takes to get results. It’s not about the hours you put in, like it was when you were an employee. You must stay focused on results and priorities all the time. That’s what it means to work smarter, not harder.
- You must be tenacious! Stick with it long enough to get results, and don’t give up easily. Accept that you will make mistakes. Learn from them and do what works. That’s how you build a solid business.
- You must be able to keep your business and your personal life separate. Working all the time will cause you to burn out. But playing when you should be working will put you out of business. Find a schedule that works for both parts of your life, and stick to it.
So is it really worth it to work freelance? Personally, I wouldn’t do it any other way. For me, it’s all about freedom. I get to call the shots AND do all the work to have that privilege.
If you’re willing to do what it really takes to be your own boss, then maybe becoming a freelance bookkeeper is the right choice for you too. It all depends on what you want your business (and your life) to be like, and what you’re willing to do to get it.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR OWN BLOG OR E-ZINE? You have permission to re-publish it, as long as you include the following author’s bio and link:
Gabrielle Fontaine, PB is a freelance Professional Bookkeeper and Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. She also publishes an interactive blog especially for bookkeepers who are ready to break free and run their own home-based bookkeeping service. Get more information at http://www.TheFreelanceBookkeeper.com
Thank you for reminding me what I need to be doing to grow my business. I want it but I need to be proactive in getting to the level that I want to be.
Thank you for your website blog! It is the best information I have read yet. I am in the process of starting a freelance in-home business. It’s a lot of work to get off the ground but the future rewards are well worth it. At this time, I am working on my AIPB Bookkeeper Certification. Next I will be familiarizing myself with Quickbooks (I use Peachtree in my current job). I have been the office manager/bookkeeper for a real estate company for the past 18 years. Quickly approaching retirement years and need to supplement my income at that time as well as build for retirement now. A light bulb went off one day when my boss said he was thinking about selling the business (he ultimately decided not to right now). Instead of panicking, I decided to look at what I could do to make myself less vulnerable to someone else’s decisions.
I loved reading your recommendation about contacting local CPA’s as I had contacted the one I work with at my current job immediately when I made the decision to go forward and he is excited about using me and referring to me as well (my current boss is behind me 100% in my business endeavors). Also picked up a small construction business almost immediately.
I will be watching this blog carefully. Thank you for taking the time to help all of us newbies get started!
Thanks for the compliment, Connie!
Sounds like you are moving full steam ahead on setting up your freelance business! Congratulations. Although it sounds like you have a good grasp on basic bookkeeping, you may want to attend the free webinar I’m doing next week that shows how basic bookkeeping principles apply in QuickBooks, so you can start to get a general flavor for that software. The live, online class will be held at 7PM Eastern / NY time on Tuesday, June 3rd. You can register at: http://www.bookkeepingdirect.com/essentials
It’s good that you have Peachtree experience, since that can become a sort of niche specialty for you as well.
Great job at being proactive AND I hope everyone notices how you got a good reaction in approaching a local CPA because you already had a relationship with him, so you immediately bypassed the typical resistance. You go girl! From a referral standpoint, it’s also great that you have the backing of your current employer; that helps to set the word-of-mouth wheels in motion.
You are doing great! Keep up the good work. And just so you (and everyone else) know, I will soon be interviewing a CPA to get inside advice on the best ways to break through the typical resistance and build even better bookkeeper-CPA relationships. So stay tuned for that!
Gabrielle
Hi Gabrielle,
Thank you for your website I find it very informative. I’m working on getting my bookkeeping certificate now and I wanted to know from your opinion my ultimate goal is that I would like to be a freelance bookkeeper but right now I don’t have any bookkeeping experience when I’m done with the course I will just have the training and certificate. Do you think I have to get a job as a bookkeeper first and gain experience then eventually get my own clients or can I work my normal job and get my own clients now part time.
Thank you,
Denny
Hi Denny,
Great question!
If you have zero real-world experience in bookkeeping, you are not really ready to start your own freelance bookkeeping business. I say that because what you learn in the “perfect” academic world is a far cry from the incomplete and convoluted information many clients will provide you. Also, you will have a certificate in bookkeeping, but do you have any experience with QuickBooks software? That is far and away the #1 small business software program and you would need to have a thorough knowledge on how the program works to use it properly for clients. So if you haven’t already, you should take a course to learn QuickBooks as well.
My best suggestion would be to either get a part-time bookkeeping job so you can get comfortable with some real life bookkeeping work, or you could also try to subcontract bookkeeping work from an established accounting firm. In that way, you would not be totally on your own. If you try to take on clients fresh out of school without any experience, you will likely get in over your head very quickly and do more harm than good for your clients and your reputation.
Hope that helps!
Gabrielle