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dep_b

The requirements to start as a freelancer, in any kind of economic climate:

* You have an accountant

* You are not afraid to draw up a contract

* Have a skill that has higher demand than supply and will remain so for a foreseeable time

* Have worked on paid side projects a few times

* One existing customer is interested in hiring you for 3 months (worth of money) or more

Ensure you set aside 50% of which 2/3rds for tax and 1/3 for bad times. Maybe you pay less tax in the end. Yay! "Free" money! Never get in the reverse situation.

If you don't have customers: don't do it. I have been making a lot of contacts in the 15 years+ I have as a professional and it's still hard to find work right now. If you're good for a few months then we're out of the pit in terms of demand for sure.

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Huh. I know a lot of people who did almost none of this and freelanced their way into successful businesses. Why is having an accountant necessary? Where I live, even simple books from the office supply store and basic tax software will tell you what you need to know as a beginner. Personally I operated my business just fine for 15 years without an accountant.

Drawing up a contract, similar, but here I would certainly mention that you can also consult a professional if needed, like a business consultant or attorney. You can also write a letter contract and communicate well enough that contracts don't matter that much in the end, which is the case for a lot of freelancers, guessing the majority.

Knowing what skill has high demand is less important than finding a team or business that likes you and needs you. If you are in tech, someone probably needs your help. Many times they will find a way for you to stick around anyway, if it's a good psychological complement.

If no one can pay you for three months worth of money, you get to decide how long you hang in there. Personally I found a veteran graphic designer who was excited to work together and started sending work immediately. Within 3 years of that I was turning down more work than I was accepting. But there was never any promise of income.

Setting aside 50% would have been impossible due to medical bills at the time. I was lucky to have free rent via the in-laws and a wife who was working as well. Still, when freelancing picked up the problem quickly became burnout and setting boundaries. This has been the same with many of my peers. Many of us went through 2008 and even the dot com crash together. Demand was never really a problem except at the very start, but the perception of an urgent need to hustle for every last client can easily break you.

My accountants saved me enough money every year to be basically free, while I don't need to worry about all kinds of stuff. I did my taxes myself often as well, but I didn't like to do it (instead of doing billable work or having spare time).

Contracts: I really suck at them. I rarely do them. I got lucky so far, perhaps 2 clients that managed to pinch me but then again assholes will be assholes with or without contracts. But hourly work is easier than fixed price. Especially when it goes sour.

> Knowing what skill has high demand is less important than finding a team or business that likes you and needs you

True. I'm a specialist in mobile remote communication solutions which should be somewhat sought after right now but I can't find matching clients. I should have networked way more the last years than I did, and I don't consider myself a bad networker.

> Still, when freelancing picked up the problem quickly became burnout and setting boundaries.

The worst thing that always happens that after a slump in work I'm going basically YES YES YES YES YES YES to all work and I've never been in the situation that when one job finally came through at least two others I've YES'ed came at more or less the same time.

So going from 0 to 60 hours per week for a few weeks. Which after a week or four really starts to turn into 30 hours worth of productivity while being behind your computer for 70.

> My accountants saved me enough money every year to be basically free

This is true for a _lot_ of people. :-) "basically free". It made me smile because it's usually not "saved me megabucks," but rather "their work allows me to focus on other things and that's worth something to me."

As a consultant with no accountant -- in what areas did they save you that much? Entirely taxes?

Yeah all kinds of tax laws I didn't know existed, places where I could earn a bit more, starting a company together with my wife so the earnings are divided instead of going into one big pile where the top part gets taxed most.

But also a US$1500 bill that never was paid by a customer by going over bills vs the business bank account's movements.

>Drawing up a contract, similar, but here I would certainly mention that you can also consult a professional if needed, like a business consultant or attorney. You can also write a letter contract and communicate well enough that contracts don't matter that much in the end, which is the case for a lot of freelancers, guessing the majority.

Having had to take legal action against multiple clients, I assure you that it really does matter in the end.

I hope for your sake that's not the majority of your work! Personally I've found that if I have to reference a contract to make a point, it's almost always a red flag-level event for that relationship.

Hey Marc! Good to "see" you again. There's a sad old saying in business that you know you've "made it" in business when someone sues you. There's something to that unfortunately, that if you are in business long enough, chances are you'll be on one side or the other of legal action. It happens. You misjudge a client, maybe they have some personal issues that bleed into a business, maybe there is a market downturn and they make some question choices. Things happen. Point being, the posters in this thread recommending the use of lawyers and accountants to protect your interests are spot on imho.

Hello Jeff! (Have we met? Apologies if I'm forgetting something...)

I see what you mean, but given the context I wonder if there might be some projection at work here, since your experience with law is so deep--so tell me what you think of this clarification: I could also recommend lawyers and accountants; however not so much with the current discussion context in mind--that being the case of a beginning freelancer working in tech. For such an individual, getting sued is typically way out of the immediate area of concern and almost certainly game over, at least in energy expenditure if not financially.

Case in point, one meeting with a business attorney and the time he spent drawing up only a contract _for working together_ resulted in one of my business partners receiving a bill of almost $3K. He told me, "I'm so glad I never bothered retaining an attorney until it was absolutely necessary."

To a brand new freelancer, building a professional team is often an anticipated risk, but it's still a risk; they are often slow to move in that direction while building capital and reputation. I think rightly so in many cases.

Given your business though--you've clearly "made it"--congratulations and I wish you all the best with all the trimmings, etc. ;-)

Marc - I'm nearly certain we went through public school together. We might have even had a previous chat in another thread about year ago.

My thinking is that too often freelancers think "I'm just a freelancer" rather than "I run a business" and it is important to make the mental leap because of the key word you said above - risk. We need contracts because they give all parties clear expectations of what is expected to happen, but also what will transpire in the event things don't go the way we expect. Without a well-written legal contract in place, both parties are at the mercy of each other acting in good faith, and unfortunately that's not always how things actually go. As a freelancer too, we often have a lot of personal skin in the game, which to my mind makes it even more imperative to have professional advice from accountants and lawyers, because we have more to lose personally. On the accounting front, I see a lot of people who make mistakes that cost themselves a lot of money because they didn't spend the relatively modest amount to get good professional advice. As another commenter stated in this same thread, the amount accountants save you pays for their cost.

Run of the mill lawyers generally bill between $200-$300/hour, so $3K might work out to ten hours of work. For many freelancers with basic needs, resources like Nolo or your local SBA office might be more affordable and get to the same goal - we're still getting professional advice, just in a different form.

I was working full time on a side project a week and a half ago, when a former boss approached with a client he couldn’t service who urgently needed a developer with my skill set. I negotiated a higher rate and now am working full time for them.

I don’t have any accountant, no contract. They will either pay me or it’s back to my side project.

You reminded me of a successful animator friend from long ago. He did work for all of the big names in animation, but would never sign a contract. He told them, "if you want me to do the work, let's do this. If you don't treat me well, we're done. If I don't treat you well, it'll be easy to get rid of me." It was a pretty brash style but it matched the kind of breezy guy he wanted to be.

There were quite a few contractors during the dot com days that were like this too--I remember some had a policy of hearing "let me explain why your paycheck will be late" and just walking out right then. Others would say, "I'm staying for a while, because I'm living off of money I made 3 months ago." And others would go right to the co-founder or COO or marketing lead and start a new business with them on the spot...something different, but comfortable since they already knew they could work together.

You can’t transfer ip without a written contract. I suspect he still owns all the work they bought

It'd be interesting to ask him about that. I suspect his answer would involve some pretty direct comments about how a deal can be done, but I really don't know.

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