You have the courage and the audacity to embark on a free voyage - so let's figure out what you should and shouldn't do. Manifesto for a freelancer.
Designer Paul Jervis wrote an excellent (albeit slightly abrupt) blog post, subtitled Manifesto for Self-Employed. To begin with, you are one of those who have decided that life in office “cubicles” of workplaces and a planned march up the career ladder is not for them. You have the courage and the audacity to embark on a free voyage - so let's figure out what you should and shouldn't do.
You are different from people whose corporate loyalty is tied in a tie and determined by the size of the compensation package.
You can define your own success. without the need to be tied to quarterly shareholder returns and reported public earnings. You do not need to donate to save pandas or llamas in distant countries, where your company is just planning to open a branch. And you certainly have no reason to trump in social networks by the fact that 2 times a week you can work outside the office.
You - unlike the "big bosses" - you can make mistakes, apologize for them and learn from these mistakes if you wish (and not just fear for your position and write the ZHPP).
You - unlike top managers on a salary - have every right create your own code of ethics and your own set of values in work, which will allow you not to work with people who are uninteresting or unpleasant to you (remember how often a manager in a “dynamically developing company” hangs up the phone and sends aloud the interlocutor with whom he has just spilled out in pleasantries).
You can do anything for your clientsand it is not necessary to “beat yourself in the chest” in public. You can act according to a pre-thought out plan, or you may not have any “quarterly goals” at all, starting the path of a freelancer. You don’t have to tighten your tie in the heat and don “dark bottom - light top - black shoes” at any time of the year. You are generally allowed to break every conceivable and inconceivable rule that fighters for office culture have been building for almost 50 years since the Second World War.
You are not contraindicated in individuality: while the corporation rivets faceless press releases that they plan to finally conquer the planet this quarter with sales of new TVs or computers with a "fundamentally new tiled OS," you are allowed to be yourself and just do your job the way you see fit …
Reporting and planning, reporting and goals you provide and set yourselfnot the Board of Directors or some “big boss” at the top.
You can excel and do your best both in what you thoroughly understand, and in what you had no idea about until yesterday. And yet you can tell your potential clients frankly about all aspects of your skills even before you sign the contract. You are not bound by faceless "corporate ethics."
You can close a business, start in parallel to another, or even engage in a completely new type of activity. Corporations spend years, if not decades, on such processes - you have the opportunity to do it in weeks and days.
You may not be delving into legal or financial aspects.by hiring a lawyer and accountant. Moreover, one specialist is enough for you to shift some of your problems onto him, and not a whole staff department.
You can be scrupulous about both who hires you and who you hire. In general, you have much more opportunities for selectivity and careful selection than a “big boss,” who simply due to the peculiarities of the corporation cannot delve into such subtleties.
"Private Correspondent"
