GOING PRO?
Quitting the day job for a life as a freelancer?
OK… but here is something to think about.
You can quit that soul-sucking cubicle job, but can you let it go?
I think that is going to be the toughest challenge you face.
Corporate life and the life of a freelancer are so different that they are polar opposites in the mindset of humans. To approach your entrepreneurial freelance career as you would a corporate career will doom you to instant, painful, and ugly death (business wise).
In corporate world:
You have a set time for nearly everything. Go in at 9, go home at 5. Monday through Friday. Two weeks of vacation – SCHEDULED. Sick pay (numbered). A boss that tells you what to do, for every hour you work. Someone is watching and monitoring and measuring what you do. You earn the same amount of money per week whether you fucked up the Jones account, or helped land a new, even bigger account. You get the same money for the hours you work as the person in the cubicle next to you, the same benefits, the same job description, the same parking pass, the same “permission”.
Permission to do a limited, company defined, corporate defined set of actions.
And the good news for corporate folks is that they get used to it.
And the terrible news for corporate folks wanting to become freelancers is they got used to it.
In ‘freelance’ world, none of that exists.
No set time for in or out, no vacations scheduled. No rules on what you have to do, when you have to do it, who you have to report to, when you have to report it, or whether the report was good or not. You do not have the same ‘perks’ as anyone, nor do you make the same amount of money for the same amount of hours worked as a competitor, and you may actually go weeks without making any money at all. You do not have a manager standing over you telling you what to do, and whether or not you did it correctly.
You do not need permission from anyone else, because you are the only one able to grant it.
And if you fuck up the Jones account, YOU take the hit.
And if you bring in a bigger account, YOU accept the gig.
In a corporate world it is them first, you second. In a freelance world it is you first, the world second.
Working corporate means going home at 5, having dinner, watching some “Game of Thrones” then off to read for an hour before going to sleep. You have some balance of life and work. Sixteen hours of life, 8 hours of work.
Freelance means you are working most every moment of that time, and building/making/creating your business.
There is no fucking “work-life balance”. There is work, and more work.
Then if you have done all that work well, you get a job that is work.
Eight hours of life, 16 hours of work.
Does that sound impossible? Does it sound harsh?
if it does, perhaps the corporate world still lives in your head and you are trying to bend a freelance world into what you know… the corporate world.
Stop.
Stop right now.
They do not mix. They have never mixed. They will never mix.
If you are recently corporate, and struggling with the freelance, you may need to do a mental reorganization. A ‘reboot’. Start over with your life.
Try a freelance retreat, or meditation. Read books by entrepreneurs. Stop watching TV, or playing video games.
Success is only granted to those that demand it, not ask for permission to chase it.
— Don Giannatti
I have to admit, I’ve had a hard time with this post, perhaps others have too. I think the difference between “going pro” and “being pro” is a lot less meaningful than the jump between “going corporate” and “going pro” and the two do not wholly exclude one another. Let me explain…
Thirty-eight years ago, I picked up a SLR at 12 years old and I’ve never put it down. At 22, I left grad school with my Master’s Degree in Chemistry and went “pro”, after supplementing my graduate teaching stipend with paid photo jobs ( e.g. weddings, headshots, bar/bat mitzvahs) and commercial projects (brochure and catalog work, anything that could be quoted, booked, and billed Net 30). What I discovered was how much I hated using my creativity to put food on the table and make rent every month. Nothing sapped my creativity more than chasing a buck or anything that even smelled like greenbacks. I had figured out how to maintain a small studio in the medium-sized market of Baltimore, but sitting around making cold calls in a shirt and tie in the pre-digital (and pre-internet) days and working part-time in a custom lab shooting copywork and internegs really sucked.
Back then, I never dreamed I’d go “corporate”, but along with digital photography (which was just emerging in 1992), came computer workstations and I figured I’d better learn as much as I could about those. I kept the studio business until it became clear that Baltimore was not a town that I could grow my business, when every studio around me was boasting “digital”, which, in those days, meant shooting 120 rolls and 4×5 sheet film and drum-scanning to digital. If film and processing costs were eating a significant part of my margin, drum scanning was both the margin AND the profit, so I closed the studio and moved to a more tech-savvy city of Boston. I figured I’d start temping with computer jobs until I figured my way around. Temp led to Perm, Perm led to Corporate, and (22 years later) Corporate led to Career… plus family, mortgage, car, the works.
I never pulled up my “Pro” roots, just never wanted to earn a living as a creative. I still take on small jobs, market my services, invest in education, network with other pros, but the idea of jumping ship just so I could live the life of a creative is not just foolish; it’s financially ruinous. I have too much invested in a career that has served me well and grown every area of my life much more than scraping by just to keep the dream alive.
While I do agree that the Going Pro versus Going Corporate gap is wide, nothing prevents you from Being a Pro and working when it suits you.