I Was Once a Freelancer Disclaimer: My main business, IVJR, was established as essentially, a freelancing company. We also still take "freelancing" projects (although we often pass on some of the work to some of our partners). When Sam and I first created IVJR, we created it as a means to generate some additional income and have some experience with creating and operating a business. We really never thought that it would bring us where we are today (doing it full time). We were very happy with some of the freelancing projects that we were getting and probably would have continued doing the work if we hadn't met the Surfing Guru. Then I Saw the Light We had been working together for several months and we were already getting our regular lessons on how to effectively grow and run a business but we had a conference call one night and he gave us a bit of advice about freelancing that I will never forget and changed the course of our business.

The problem with the type of work that you guys do is that you will never be able to rapidly grow your business. You could do your job very well and have plenty of work to keep you busy, but you will not have created anything of value, nothing that you can really ever sell to anyone else. Maybe you have some great ideas about bringing on other "freelancers" to do the work for you. But then you have created a whole new set of headaches. Finding good employees, keeping the employees happy, dealing with quality issues since the work is no longer your own. What you need is to create a product or service that you can sell over and over again. Something that doesn't require extremely talented workers. This is the only way that you can quickly grow your business to a successful level and have the accompanying lifestyle that is the goal of all entrepreneurs.

The Mathematics of Freelancing just didn't Work I think I had always known what the Surfing Guru had just told us. It was really a case of simple math. We had a few projects from the Surfing Guru that were worth $10,000-$15,000, a couple from other sources around $5,000, and then some web sites worth around $2,500. We knew that we probably needed around $200,000 in revenue to create a sustainable business for us. It wasn't a goal that we needed to reach right away but to be successful, we felt that was a minimum revenue that we should earn. The problem was that $200,000 per year meant 20 of those big projects - and those aren't that easy to find. Most small businesses weren't looking to spend $10,000 on websites or custom development projects. If we were able to combine projects and get an average value of $5,000 per project, that is still 40 projects per year. Finding the Time to Do Everything Another problem we faced was that the big projects took up all of our time. We weren't spending all of our time working on it but they could take up to 3 months from beginning to end. If we had to do 40 per year, that meant that we could have about 10 projects going on at any one time. It was just a recipe for problems. And the time didn't even account for the sales that we had to do. Creating proposals, talking to potential clients, and finding new leads took up a lot of our time. Valuable time that we could have used to work on the projects. Leveraging our Time and Abilities Instead of the "instant gratification" of freelancing, the Surfing Guru suggested creating products once and then reselling them. It requires a lot more investment of time (and possibly money) and the payoff is much less certain and longer term. But I eventually realized that he was just providing us basic entrepreneurial advice. No one will be able to grow a business if they try to do everything themselves. Usually that means doing the actual work, since most entrepreneurs go into a business doing what they know. But that can also mean doing the sales, bookeeping, or any of the other myriad of functions that a business needs to operate. Freelancing Wouldn't Lead us to the Lazy Business By this point, we already had learned enough from the Surfing Guru to know that we wanted the same type of business that he owned - high income with little work. And freelancing would never get us there. We wouldn't be able to get a high level of income and to even reach a comfortable revenue level would require A LOT of work. And we would never be able to create something of value that we could eventually sell, since we would always be such an integral part of the business. This doesn't mean that freelancing is evil and no one should ever do it. Far from it. I think we were proof that it can be an effective source of income. We have worked with a lot of successful freelancers who do better work at a lower price than companies we deal with. And I'm sure they have a lot more freedom and income than the workers at those companies. If you like doing some freelance work and want additional income then you SHOULD freelance. There are some great advantages to it. Check out this site if you're getting started in freelancing or just want some freelancing advice, check out www.FreelanceSwitch.com. But if you want to grow a business and become a Lazy Business Owner, then you'll want to mimize your freelancing work and focus on building a business and adding value to it.