FBC – 348 – If You are thinking about going into freelancing then this is for you

If You are thinking about going into freelancing then this is for you.

Today, I have a few tips for people who want to become freelancers. As a matter of fact, I also have tips for people looking to hire freelancers.

Is it a wise choice? Is it worth it? does it actually make your life easier?

All details in today's episode.

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This is a habit that you guys should adopt if you want to be more efficient, if you want your business to be more profitable, and if you want to have a better life.

It's not complicated. People think its rocket science or something. It's really not rocket science. So basically, if you have a task that needs to be done every single day or several times per day, automate it. But some people are like, yeah, but it takes me a second to do it. I might as well just do it. Yeah. It takes you a second, but it will take you a second until the end of times.

And when you compound it, it's a lot of seconds man. That's a lot of work, a lot of worry for nothing. And the best thing to do is to take a few minutes to think about how you can automate it. I meet so many people who say, let me do this and it's just five minutes, man. Yeah, but five minutes. You multiply that by a year.

Trust me, it's a lot of work and stress because you need to do it five times a day or something like that. So important lesson. Very important. If you have something like that, try to automate it.  You don't necessarily need a developer.

I think that there might be something on chrome. I remember that earlier in my career I was using macros on Firefox. So a macro is just recording what you're doing, right? So if you're doing the same task every day, like, oh, you log into this interface, you click on this reporting, you always run the same report, then you can do it for the last time.

You've recorded that session. So you press record. You do whatever you need to do. You stop. And then afterwards, the only thing you have to do, you press one button and the tool is going to do it for you and going to save you an awful lot of time. So you don't money or anything to go and automate it.

And there is some really cool automation that you could actually do with Zapier, depending on you want to do OK.

If You are thinking about going into freelancing then this is for you

So anyway, the reason why I'm telling you that is because I wanted to automate something because this was going to be a nightmare. All right. So we're launching a new business. And the plan is to basically have a lot of customers. And these customers are going to have a lot of interaction with their customers. And for each one of these interactions, we need to notify the client to send him the details of the prospect and stuff so that they can follow up and everything.

It would have required someone in my team to manually forward the emails to the client and I was like, dude, that's not going to happen. I am going to find a developer who can develop something very simple. We don't need something complicated that can automate the whole thing. There was one piece missing for the automation.

And I said, let me look for a developer. When you're looking for a freelancer to do something for you, you're like, oh man, there are so many freelance. It's going to be super easy, all right, so that's one thing. And then when you're a freelancer, you're telling yourself there are so many people looking anyway, I'll never have problems finding contacts, but both of you couldn't be more wrong.

Freelancing is not a business I will actually ever go into because from the freelancing perspective, it's so inconsistent. It’s hard to put some like retainer or something like that. Most freelancers would do one job here and then they don't know when the next one's going to come.

So it's like an emotional roller coaster. You never know when your next pay check is going to be. And then most of the time you're actually selling your time. Very often you leverage your time. So you exchange your time for money. And since you're limited to maybe eight hours or 10 hours maximum when you're awake, then that limits what you can actually earn.

A lot of people just assume that, you know, what I'm going to do is register as a freelancer and people are just going to knock on my door and I'll get clients after to clients. And trust me, it's really not the case because you need to work hard at finding clients. And very often it's not your specialty. You're a designer, you're a copywriter or something. You're not a salesperson.

So you don't know how to find the clients. And then you end up doing all the sales stuff that you actually hate doing. So it takes you 99 percent of your time and whatever it is that you actually love to do, which is design or copywriting or coding or something, you can actually never do any of it. And then it sucks. Then you give up and you think that, you know, freelancing sucks. So because you didn't think it through.

When I finally find a good developer, I make sure that this is a long lasting relationship and that's my go to guy or go to girl. Right. So when you find someone who's good, responsive and who's reliable, make sure to treat them well. Don't be this idiot who's going to underpay and overwork people. I see that so many times.

So I always look at the long term and how this is going to make your life easier in the long run. If you just have to send, like, a Skype message or, you know, a text to someone saying, hey, bro, I have something for you and that person starts working on it, trust me, it's a lot better than having to scan through people's resumes.

So that was my message for today. Make sure you adopt this in your routine, especially the automation stuff. This is precious.

Freelancing Is Freedom Until You Realize You Just Hired The Worst Boss

Freelancing looks like the escape hatch from a job, and it can be, but nobody warns you about the trap. When you trade hours for money, you have not bought freedom, you have become an employee with no salary, no boss to blame, and no ceiling on the hours. I lived it. The more clients I took, the more my time vanished, and the day I got sick the income stopped cold. That is the flaw. If the money only shows up when you show up, you do not own a business, you own a job that fired your employer.

The way out is to build assets, not just bill hours. Turn what you do for one client into a product, a system, or a service others can run, so your income stops depending on your calendar. I explain how I moved from selling hours to selling systems on my story page, and I share the transition in detail on my Substack. On why productized offers scale where freelancing stalls, Harvard Business Review has covered it, and the early stage playbooks in the Stripe Atlas guides map the path from service to business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is freelancing a smart career move for most people?

Freelancing is a smart career move for self starters who can sell, deliver, and manage their own time. It is a poor fit for people who need structure handed to them daily. The lifestyle and income ceiling can be excellent, but only after you survive a slow first phase of finding clients and building proof.

What should I know before quitting a job to freelance full time?

Before quitting, you should have at least three months of expenses saved, two or three paying clients, a defined service, and a simple pricing structure. Most freelance failures come from leaving too early, not from a lack of talent. The buffer protects your decisions during the slow weeks every freelancer faces in the first year.

How should businesses choose the right freelancer to hire?

Businesses should hire freelancers based on documented results, clear communication, and a portfolio that matches the specific outcome they need. Cheapest is almost never the right answer. A defined scope, a written contract, and a short paid trial project protect both sides and quickly reveal whether the working relationship will actually deliver.

Does freelancing really make life easier than a regular job?

Freelancing trades one set of stresses for another. You lose the boss but gain the sales pressure. You gain flexibility but lose paid leave. For some people, the trade is liberating. For others, it is exhausting. Honest self assessment beats hype here, because the wrong fit can burn through savings and confidence very fast.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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