The independent landscape
The paths from a 9-5 to independence
“Now what?”
I made my first bucks online. But what now?
After a few hours of exhilaration, I’m thinking, “How do I scale this? How do I make it sustainable to pay the bills?”
$5, $100 or even $1000 are all cool milestones to hit. But in the end, I’ll need to do this over and over and over again to make this a viable path.
There is no nuance
What I hate the most is how everybody says one thing and its opposite.
Most people get all sensational about a specific way to make money without giving it a proper shot and usually do not go into the nuances. That’s when they start saying, “Agencies are the best model there is,” or “Freelancing is a race to the bottom.”
Making money is already hard and confusing. The added noise to the common internet pool is not helping.
What’s noise? What’s signal?
What makes it so hard is you need to pretty much try out those different ways to make money and form your own opinion. How else would you know what’s noise from signal?
But it’s deeper than that. And I’m at that stage where I need to extract principles out of my experiments. How do I want to do business? What works for me? Who do I enjoy working with? I can then use those principles to filter out ways I can go about it.
Ultimately, most people are trying to provide cookie-cutter solutions to your “money problem.” But there are none. We need to do the grunt work and figure it out for ourselves. Everything else is just inspiration for us to keep going and keep experimenting.
The independence landscape
With all that being said, I’ve extracted some patterns from my experiences, a dozen interviews and analyzing the stories of countless independents.
Job to products
That’s where I (re)started my journey after reading the 4-hour workweek. I tried to launch a bunch of random ideas while working my full-time job (video games, meditation accountability group, calligraphy courses, etc.).
Cons
Tricky navigating side projects + employer: The thing about building products on the side of a job is that your employer might not be so enthused about your little experiments. And if you do it under the radar, it can be quite stressful to hide it from them.
Too much tinkering: I tinkered for a while without a proper awareness of what could make a good chunk of money and actually pay the bills. It’s cool to sell $1000 of info products or get a SaaS to $100 per month but it’s cooler to make $4000 or more every month to pay the bills.
Can feel stuck for a long time: It might take a long, long time until you make something successful enough that it pays the bill. So, if you’re frustrated with your job and choose this path, you might feel very stuck in your situation.
Exhausting: I had rough weeks at work, and during that time, the only thing I wanted to do was escape into binge-watching shows or playing video games.
Pros
Lower risk because of salary: It’s a great way to take risks because if all else fails, you still have a job and you’re happy with your salary.
Built knowledge and skills while being paid: A great way to go about it is to leverage the knowledge you already took years to develop. Even better if you’ve done workshops or classes, the demand is validated and you can export that to an online format. But you’ll still need to find a way to distribute your products.
I’ve seen a bunch of people launching a ton of products alongside their 9-5 but I’m pretty sure they are the exceptions.
Then there are the people who quit their jobs to go full-time on products, but you’ll see lots of people going back to a 9-5 after a year or two because they don’t have enough runway, and it’s harder to generate revenue. I just saw two posts about it on Twitter today of people going back to a 9-5 (here and here).
Job to client work
This is my most successful so far, and that’s the one I see people being the most successful at as well. Starting straight into products is playing it on hard mode. Selling your skills is just easier. Not easy, but easier. It’s like finding a job many times but with extra business steps.
Cons
Feeling stuck like in a job: I’ve seen a bunch of people staying stuck in this phase because it can take a ton of energy not only to do the work but also to find leads, manage the business side of the work, etc. It can be a lot, especially at the beginning, and without good systems.
Working on other people’s stuff: If you’re like me, you like being the captain of your own ship and building stuff you own and benefit from. You never flex the muscle of building your own products, but you help others do so.
Taking a ton of energy: A lot of non-billable work goes into making this work. It can lead to exhaustion and burnout if it’s a scramble to fulfill the work and find new clients on top of everything else.
High-context switching: In most cases, you won’t have one client. You might, but it’s rare. So you’ll have to juggle different projects with different teams and clients with various communication styles.
Pros
Proto-business: You can generate revenue with very little upfront capital. You don’t even need a website. Have you seen those contractors handing in business cards and just making business by text messages? It’s a great way to dip your toe with little risk.
Lots of flexibility: You get the added flexibility in who you work with, and you have more freedom of when you work. You don’t need to ask permission to take a vacation. It’s like going from being a kid to an adolescent. You’re not asking your parents to go out, you’re telling them.
More upside than a job: By selling your services, you can make a good hourly rate and keep you afloat or even thrive without a job. It’s common to see people make 2-3 times more than their job.
It’s usually way easier for people who worked with clients during their 9-5 and are selling the same skill set on the market. They’ll be way faster to turnaround decent revenue because they’ve practiced this before. But it’s not impossible to use a skill you already have and figure out how to make it work. It might just be a bit harder.
Some people are happy at that stage. Personally, I’m not the happiest in that phase, but it works for now. The next step is usually either launching an agency or launching products.
Job to client work to products
This is pretty much the same as going from a job to products. Although client work allows for more flexibility and more time to work on side projects.
Cons
Client work replaces a 9-5: You feel like client work is sucking up all your time and energy. You don’t want to do anything else after work. You can feel stuck the exact same way you felt stuck in your full-time job.
Hard to find time to develop products: But it can also be harder to justify it. Why would you spend 10 hours to maybe make $100 where you could work for a client and make this in an hour? On top of that, products will draw your focus away from your client work and potentially slow down growth or reduce quality.
Pros
Identify opportunities from client work: A ton of people come to you with things they want to develop. It can be a great source of inspiration. Literally, people will tell you about their problems and sometimes be quite open about what’s going on in their business.
Can have demand validated from client work: If you’ve worked on 3 projects with the same problem and you know how to build a product around it. You can potentially start testing with those clients and then find other people to buy it.
Client work acts as a safety net: Exactly like a salary. You can always return to client work if your product doesn’t work.
All in all, I’d rather be stuck with client work than with a full-time job. Even if I make less at least there is more flexibility and more upside.
Job to client work to agency
When working on client work, you quickly come to the realization that your time is limited. You can’t take more than 4-5 clients at a time, depending on your work. But also, if you’re sick and going on vacation, you’re not making money.
You can raise your prices, but there’s always a ceiling if you don’t want to scare away all the demand you’ve generated.
That’s when people start thinking about scaling their client work, and they need to hire people to do so.
I’ve worked in agencies before but I haven’t hired people to help with my client work yet. I might later. But we’ll see how it goes.
Cons
Lower margin than solo client work: Because you have to hire to help you fulfill the work, you’ll have to forfeit a part of your previously high margin. The idea is to tackle more volume with less margin and make more profit at the end of the day.
More managing: If you’re flying solo, you’re managing yourself and, basically, your client and their team. But once you hire people, coordination starts to be even more important. You need to make sure everybody is aligned. There is more back-and-forth to ensure things run smoothly.
More selling: This is especially true with full-time employees. You need to be selling constantly so the gaps between projects are not too wide. You’ll need to make sure you have enough runway in the business to cover any lull in work.
Good talent is expensive: It’s hard to find good people, and if you find good people, you want to make sure you keep them! Price is only one part of the equation here, but it’s a good thing to consider. You can hire in lower-cost geographies, but then you add in cultural and timezone differences. It’s fine if you’re cool with it!
Pros
More revenue: If you were able to tackle 100k solo, with someone else you can now generate more revenue and profit.
Bigger projects: You can tackle bigger projects and do more interesting work involving more strategic thinking if that’s what you like.
Profit even when on vacation: If you set things right, you should be able to go on vacation, and nothing will explode in your absence.
This is the client work path on steroids. You not only have to figure out how to find leads and fulfill them. But added a track to your business: hiring. And it inevitably comes with managing. It’s an all-new realm of skill sets to develop.
Job to client work to agency to products
That’s the path I’ve been the least exposed to. But I interviewed Chris Dunlop, who has an agency that develops products, so you can check it out if you’re interested. But here’s what I gather from the people I’ve seen do it.
Cons
Products can be relegated to the side: Exactly the same as previously. The whole team is focused on client work and the product is neglected. Although, it seems like treating the product like a client works for people.
Still riskier than client work: You’re putting upfront resources in the hope that the product will pay out later. But it’s still not a guarantee!
Pros
Build as a team: You can potentially deliver something way more interesting than if you were alone with a small budget and a few freelancers.
Business is already set up: You don’t really need to figure out the business side of things because it’s already been taken care of.
If you have any examples of people succeeding in launching products with an agency, please share. I’m curious to dive deeper there!
Go out there and try it out!
There’s no one-size-fits-all path. I’d say it’s probably a good thing to try a bit of everything to make your own opinion, but also discover what you like the most and what you’re best at on those paths.
There is no substitute for experience.
What’s the path you’ve taken or are thinking of taking? Did I miss anything in the pros and cons for each?
3 juicy links of the week
I love those stories. They are so inspirational. If you want different results, we need to be willing to do something completely different than everyone’s doing.
The Cold Email expert: how to get a billionaire’s attention.
In the same vein of the previous link, how to find and go through “The Third Door” which is basically creating your own path to meet new people and generate new opportunities for yourself instead of going down the beaten path.
I like the idea of setting a number and working towards a goal. What would be your number?
Happy belated birthday! 🎂
The intro gave me the impression of those cookie-cutter posts you bashed (😅) but turned out to be a great post properly hashing out the various solopreneurship paths. 👊