Life as a freelancer can be pretty complex with many ups and downs.

When you’re a freelancer you work all of the time. You have no guarantees and you’re on the constant hustle. You never have time off. You don’t have vacations. You have to create your own schedule and figure out your own strategy for getting ahead.

How much you earn depends on you. How much time you relax is your own prerogative.

With that being said, did you know that UFC fighters are also freelancers? They are technically self-employed independent contractors and they don’t directly work for the UFC. So a UFC fighter is no different than a personal trainer in that sense (minus the ability to destroy another human being).

What’s the point of this? I wanted to share how a fellow freelancer recently lost out on $130,000. That’s a painful amount of zeros to lose.

How did someone lose out on $130k?

I’m a huge UFC fan. I went to the first ever show that they had in Toronto. I try to watch every show.

On a recent card, a new comer to the company, Pat Healy, won his fight on PPV. It was a huge show and he definitely impressed everyone with his performance. As a result of his exceptional performance he earned himself two bonuses. One for fight of the night and the other for submission of the night. Each bonus was worth $65k.

So as a freelance fighter, Pat Healy, earned himself an extra $130k on top of his show money, win money, and any sponsorships that he has. I don’t know about you but that’s pretty impressive, right?

Boom! The other day it was announced that Pat Healy failed his drug test for marijuana. It’s an illegal substance. The UFC policy is to withhold all bonuses until you pass your drug tests. So just like that, Pat Healy, has to say goodbye to the $130k.

For a newcomer to the UFC and struggling freelancer, that’s “change-your-life” type of money.

Since this site isn’t about judging, drugs, or politics, I wanted to get in a different direction next…

What are the lessons from this $130k mistake?

Remember that nothing is guaranteed!

When you work for yourself, there are absolutely no guarantees. When you have a standard 9-5 job, you show up, survive the day, go home, and never think about work when you’re at home.

As a freelancer, your income, your schedule, and everything in general is unpredictable. There are no guarantees.

One minute you’re dreaming about what you’re going to do with that $130k (buy a freaking house!) and the next you’re back to being broke.

Please don’t forget that we as freelancers don’t have any guarantees.

Know the rules of the game.

What are the rules of the game? You can try to be clever and creative as a freelancer. That’s cool. You do have to remember that each game has its own set of rules. As glorified as rule-breaking is, in some fields you have to know what you can do and what you can get away.

You don’t want to get yourself into trouble as a freelancer. You want to thrive.

Keep your eye on the prize.

It’s easy to get distracted.

You’re on a unique journey as a freelancer. Your friends aren’t always going to be on the same journey.

In this case, apparently, Healy socially smoked marijuana with some friends a while back. It likely seemed innocent at the time and he obviously thought that he was going to pass his drug test. That one joint cost him $130k. Ouch! One second he took his eye off the prize and he got burned.

You have to remember that it’s important to associated with like-minded folks as a freelancer. You don’t want to let anyone get in the way of reaching your goals.

Okay, so this is a stupid question, but here it goes — what would you do if you lost out on $130,000?

What’s your excuse? Why haven’t you launched something yet? What’s holding you back from making money on your own?

We discussed how failure to launch is very critical. Today we’re going to crush common excuses for not launching. I hate excuses. I’m annoyed by those that use them. There are so many opportunities out there. Why waste valuable time on creating useless excuses?

What are these excuses for not launching?

Not enough time.

Poor you. You have school or work. How will you get ever get anything done? I mean, you just don’t have any time for anything. You’re always so busy. You just don’t have any time to start that billion dollar business that has been on your mind.

You haven’t launched anything because the world isn’t giving you enough hours.

Let’s destroy this idea!

When you want to get something done, you will. When you don’t, you’ll create excuses until you’re blue in the face. You can read all of the time management articles in the world. You can search the web for answers. The reality is that we’re all natural procrastinators. We avoid doing work that we don’t care for or are afraid of. When I was in school it took me forever to finish assignments. I usually got everything done at the last minute. I was up all night the night before completing the assignment. It was horrible.

The truth is that you already have enough time. Stop searching for excuses. Make use of your time. Find projects that you care about. The rest will work out for itself. Trust me on this.

What happens when you have enough time, but no ideas?

Looking for the perfect idea.

Are you waiting for the perfect idea? I have so many friends that want to launch but just don’t know where to start. They want to create the next Facebook. They want to take over the whole Internet. They want the perfect idea. It’s all or nothing. So for now, it happens to be nothing. Ooops.

Well, guess what the truth is on the perfect idea?

It does NOT exist.

There are no perfect ideas. Facebook was just a better version of MySpace. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to keep it spinning sometimes or make it spin faster.

Stop sitting around and waiting for some magical idea to hit. It won’t. Work on an average idea.

I had a professor once tell us that he would choose an A team with a B idea over a B team with a A idea. Why? Because execution is key. Your idea doesn’t matter. What matters is how you execute it and put things together. So stop waiting around.

This brings us to our next point…

Not sure where to start.

Where are you supposed to start? There are so many options. So many choices. What are you supposed to do first?

Often we don’t launch because we want things to be perfect. We don’t want to start because we want to launch with a boom. We want to take over from the start.

Let’s crush this excuse…

Everything is in a work-in-progress. I learned this a long time ago. Things will never be perfect. The market will never be dying for you.

What do you do? You just do the best that you can and learn on the job. This is what I’ve done with everything in my life.

What happens when you want to start but have technical issues?

Waiting for the right business name.

Business names, business cards, and all of that fun other stuff. These are so important.

Right? Nope.

Nobody cares about your business cards. I have absolutely no idea why people get business cards before they’ve even found one client or made one dollar. Wtf? Why?

Stop thinking about business cards. I know that you want to show chicks and increase your chances of getting laid, but it doesn’t work like that. People want their problems solved. Nobody wants your stupid business card. They’re only going to toss it as soon as they walk away from you. So stop pestering people with your cards.

Focus on finding a client or making a dollar first. Then you can worry about business cards and your business name.

I could go on with the excuses. But that’s lame. It’s time to get something launched for once and for all. 

The title says it all. There are common questions that arise when you think about freelancing.

• Should I really bother with freelancing?
• Shouldn’t I focus on my main income?
• Who needs to waste time on another income?
• Why should you even bother with freelancing and other ventures?

These are all valid points. This is why we’re going to dissect this whole argument slice by slice.

Should I solely focus on my day job?

With a day job comes lots of responsibility and time taken up in any given day. This will eat up a majority of your day. You likely have to work 8 hours. Then you have to factor in commute and everything else. With all of that, you might not have much time or energy to focus on anything else. I totally get that.

If you want to be a lawyer or doctor or any given field that requires a ton of effort to get your foot in the door, then you might want to direct all of your energy towards your day job.

There are rare cases where you should only focus on your day job.

What about for the rest of us?

The rest of us are unhappy with our jobs and want more out of life. We need to focus on more than just our job that’s causing misery and stress.

The biggest issue with your day job is branding. 

Once you’re stuck in a certain position, you’re going to be in that boat forever. It’s difficult to get out. It’s sad.

What am I talking about? Once you get branded as “the friend” or the “coffee guy” or “the receptionist” it’s difficult to move up. We all like to look to rags to riches stories for inspiration. There’s a reason those are popular stories. It’s because they’re rare events. Branding is key. Once you get branded as something, it’s almost impossible to move away from it. You’re better off leaving and moving on. This holds true for being “the friend” or “the coffee guy.” You have to move on. You won’t get rid of that label. Sorry.

To get into further detail about building expertise and improving yourself, I asked an important question a few weeks ago: when’s the last time you had sex?

I believe in building expertise and showing results. At your day job, you’re usually just trying not to get fired. You’re doing you’re best to not piss off your boss. You don’t want to step on any toes. You just want to survive until 5pm and last another day. You’re not learning anything or building any expertise. That sucks.

What if you lose your job? What the hell are you going to do? You would be screwed. You spent the last X amount of time focusing on not getting fired.

Is freelancing worth the time?

Freelancing is the absolute best way to get started with any form of entrepreneurship.

Instead of chasing these useless passive income strategies or looking for ways to make $4 million a week while you lay on the beach, why don’t you just start freelancing? You can use your skills to make money. You can search for your first client to see if your business has any legs to stand on. This beats searching for riches.

The reality is that most of us aren’t creatively fulfilled at work. We hate it. We have a few friends that we hang out with. Most others just annoy us. Freelancing will allow us to be creative. It’s the ultimate opportunity to throw ourselves at a project. It sure beats looking for any excuse to get wasted just to forget about the workday.

The mandatory post on focus is worth checking out. Once you channel your energy and figure out how to focus, you’ll be impressed with what you can accomplish. It’s really you vs you.

What if there’s no time left?

This is the biggest myth.

I don’t want to hear about how you don’t have any time. It’s annoying.

We all have time. We all have access to the same 24 hours in any given day. Yet, some of us use this time wisely. Others fill it up with busy work. Then there are those that get absolutely nothing done. Don’t be one of those that get nothing done. Don’t even bother with the busy work. Get real work done so that you can see real results.

Please don’t fail too launch. Get something out there. Time is precious.

This site is about our journey to $5,000 in monthly freelancing income. Are we going to do this or what? No more excuses.

“I really need to launch that project soon.” — most people reading this, including myself of course.

Money comes and goes. Time goes and never comes back. Ever. It’s gone.

Failing is normal and should happen often. Not trying is just pathetic.

If you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.

I can post all sorts of quotes. But I won’t. That’s for another article.

You already know what you should be doing. You know what needs to be done. You know that re-watching the last season of Dexter is pretty entertaining, yet not productive at all.

If you want a kick in the butt, you need to check out my interview with Chris Guillebeau. If you want to start doing more, you need to continue reading…

Launch something NOW.

This site is called Start Freelancing Now, not Start Freelancing Someday. Screw that. Someday isn’t and shouldn’t be apart of your weekly calendar.

In the interview conducted for Studenomics, Chris Guillebeau said it best:

“Launch something quickly — within 30 days — even if the website isn’t perfect or you don’t have everything together. As soon as possible, get your first sale or your first client.”

This really opened my eyes because up until that point I was stalling myself with a new project (this site). It’s easy to wait for the perfect logo or article or for things to work out. It takes balls to just launch and get feedback on something that’s not perfect.

Launch now and fix as you go.

This is what I did with my first blog ever. I launched Studenomics with ZERO SKILLS in anything remotely worth mentioning. I couldn’t do any of the following:

• Write a blog post properly.
• Edit the backend stuff.
• Code.
• Design graphics.
• Promote myself.

Some will argue that I still suck at all of those things. No comment!

Don’t worry about the minor details. Nothing is perfect. We’re all amateurs. We all learn on the job.

Here’s a quick story on my first theme…

I was so proud to have found and installed a specific WordPress theme. I thought that I was set. The main image was a desk and the site was Studenomics. How clever, right? So I joined a blogging-related forum to get some feedback. I was so excited to boast about my new site. I couldn’t wait to share it with the world. I posted a link and waited for the compliments to flood in.

“What the hell is that?”

And the negative comments came in. Were these bloggers all wrong? Nope. I was clueless and chose the WORST theme on the face of this planet. Oh well. I quickly changed gears and switched themes. The good news was that you could easily change a theme. You can’t easily build a focus or replace passion.

So I from then on outsourced the graphic and design work of course.

But Martin, I can’t launch because…

Shutup. What’s your excuse? No time? No money? No energy? Great.

First you need to read my article on getting things done. Then check out my mandatory advice on focus. Three, ditch the two previous options and just start working.

What are you waiting for?

Time is so precious and I’m going to be that annoying guy that constantly reminds you of this.

I don’t want you to let your 20s or 30s slip away.

My confession on failing to launch. YIKES!

Alright, so I’m not perfect. Instead of writing about launching I should have been launching.

The truth is that I’m guilty of making the same mistakes that I mock. I allow myself to get distracted. I waste time on Facebook. I go out 5 nights a week sometimes. I watch too much useless crap. I read blogs on how to make money. Enough of that.

I want you guys to push me as well. I want you to push me to spend more time on my newest project — Kettlebell Rebels.

Let’s launch something right now! Don’t wait go after it.

Let’s assume that you’re freelancing for a living. You have been at it for a few years now and are in your late-2os or 30s. You’re ready to settle down and buy a place. What should you do next? Is it possible for a freelancer to buy a place? Will freelancers struggle with real estate options?

I must confess that the answer is yes. It’s not easy for a freelancer to buy a home for one simple reason. Many entrepreneurs are either broke or have an inconsistent income. As someone loaning HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars, you’re not exactly all that eager about taking this risk. You don’t want to loan someone money that might not be able to pay it back. The lender is just trying to protect its own financials.

However, you’re not totally out of luck as a freelancer looking to buy a place…

Do you have proof of your income?

Do you have the documentation and tax history to prove your income? As a freelancer you’re really going to have to prove that you have money coming in. Believe me, this is because many “freelancers” don’t have an income or their income sucks. The bank wants to know that you at least have the money coming in to pay for your basic expenses.

It’s important that you’ve been filing your taxes and have a solid history because you have to bring all of this documentation forward. Everything needs to be transparent. No hiding money or playing games. It won’t work out too well.

Can you prove your income?

How consistent is your income?

It’s awesome if you made huge money this year because you grew your business. I’m all for it!

However, the bank may see this differently. They might be skeptical about your inconsistent income. They want to see that you’re consistent with your income. They want to see a few year’s worth as proof. It’s great that your business is booming right now, but who’s to say that things won’t completely tank next year?

I don’t want to be a pessimist here, but that’s what the bank will be thinking about. They want to know that your income is consistent. They don’t want to loan money to someone that’s simply having a great month or quarter. That’s not enough to be trusted with such a huge loan.

Do you have any money saved up?

How are your savings? What sort of down-payment can you put down?

If you can put down a huge payment on your mortgage, this will help. If you can’t, then you’re going to struggle even more.

You might want to save up some more money as a freelancer before you attempt to apply for a home mortgage.

Have you considered a part-time gig?

Have you thought about getting a part-time or even full-time gig? This can help you secure that mortgage if the bank sees that you have a stable job. You might like taking risks, but the bank doesn’t. They hate risks. They want the sure thing.

You always have options. You can apply for Heritage home loans or any other bank in your area. You’re not limited and it never hurts to try if you really want to explore real estate.

You’re not totally screwed as a freelancer looking to buy a place. You just have to have your stuff together.

“I want to start freelancing or making money on my own. I want to quit my job because it sucks.” — A random friend when they find out that I freelance for money or run my own finance site.

“Please don’t.” — Me, realizing that this person just doesn’t have it.

It’s nearly impossible to focus in your 20s. I’ll be the first to admit that hours and days can easily slip away when you don’t focus. It’s easy to get distracted. It’s even easier to just say screw it and get nothing done. Working for yourself, freelancing, and earning your own income are all very risky endeavors.

When you have a job, all you have to do is show up. Let’s be honest, you don’t even have to do anything spectacular most of the time. As long as you’re present and half-awake, you’re good. You don’t have to think about focus, getting things done, stressing about getting paid, chasing clients, or anything along those lines. You just get the bare minimum done.

If you want to stick to a new workout plan or get your freelancing business off the ground, you need INTENSE focus and systems in place to help you get shit done. It’s not easy.

What’s the obvious advice on focus?

There’s typical advice on focus and getting work done. You know how it goes. To focus you must…

• Cut out distractions.
• Turn off social media.
• Work on one thing at a time.
• Stop going on Facebook.
• Never have sex.
• Stay in every single night.
• Cut off all of your friends and be a loner.

Did you really think that nobody thought of this?

Mr. Expert, I was thinking that being distracted was always a good thing. Damn! You guys are smarter than that. We all know that we’re wasting time on Facebook! There’s nothing productive that comes from Facebook, aside from making plans and getting tagged in photos where you’re singing karaoke (maybe that’s just me).

The aforementioned tips on focus/getting things done are lame and useless. I don’t want to stay in always. I don’t want to cut my friends off. I don’t want to stay off Facebook. I can’t just work on one thing at a time.

I don’t want to be so restricted! I’m in my 20s not 80s.

If those tips don’t work, then what the hell does work? Is there a magic formula?

What nobody else will tell you about focus and getting things done…

You have to take care of your life.

When your life sucks, it’s easy to let the minor things bring you down. It’s impossible to focus on your freelancing when you’re mad at the world or frustrated with your results in general.

• Nobody responded to my emails. My idea sucks. I quit.
• I had a rough drive home from work. I don’t feel like doing anything now.

Sound familiar?

You have to take care of your life. How do you do this?

1. Cut out toxic people from your life. Don’t ley anyone bring you down!
2. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Bad things happen to good people. Get over it.
3. Make yourself happy. It’s your job to make yourself happy. Don’t rely on a potential partner, your boss, or anyone else to make you happy.
4. Create a plan to become debt-free. If you’re in debt, it can really take over your whole life. My suggestion here is to do your best to create a plan to get out of debt with your current income. It’s easier said than done, but once you see some progress, you’ll be feeling amazing.

[I highly recommend you check out my take on how-to live forever.]

What’s next for focus?

You have to build your confidence.

You need to be successful to be confident and confident to be successful. Wait, which one comes first?

When you’re confident, you’re on top of the world. When you believe in yourself, nothing will stop you. When you lack confidence, you can’t freelance or get any work done because you simply don’t believe in yourself and don’t have that extra bounce in your step to be bold. You do what’s easy. You go to your job because it’s easy. You don’t take risks.

How do you build your confidence to get more done?

1. Enter a competition. Join a challenge or compete for something. Friendly competition will help you boost your confidence and force you to be a more focused person.
2. Hang out with better people. I’ve always been told that when you’re the smartest person in the room, you should leave. I believe in this. I love hanging out with those that are more successful than me. I’m forced to rise up to their level.
3. Get into the habit of failing. We’re all so damn scared of failing. So what? Fail hard and fail often. Get failure over with. Approach beautiful strangers, test out bold business ideas, and go after high-end clients. Get into the habit of failing.

Take my word for it, when you’re happy with your life and confident, nothing can stop you. You’ll think of insanely creative freelancing ideas, work on projects you didn’t have the balls to work on earlier, find clients because you’re not afraid of rejection.

It’s okay to work on a few things at once.

You’re not on a date here. You’re not with your girlfriend. You can do a few things at once.

Once you build your confidence and have some freelance work under your belt, you can work on two huge tasks at once. I first heard of this idea in an email. Ever since then I’ve been a huge fan of working on a few things (articles, projects, ideas, client pitches) at once.

The reasoning behind this is that if one project or pitch flops, you always have the other one. If you run out of ideas for one pitch, you can go back to the other. You catch the drift here?

The goal is to always be working on something. This something could be a client proposal, project, pitch, or anything else.

Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket. Go after those freelancing clients! Once you’re making enough money, you can start thinking about quitting your job. For now, go after the money baby!

You need to put systems in place that force you to work.

How are you going to force yourself to work? Self-motivation and will power will only get you so far. When you’e at your 9-5, your boss forces you to work. When you’re on your own, you are the boss!

This is why I’ve learned to put systems in place to help me reach my various goals. A few examples include:

• I do automatic deductions with my bank. Money comes out of my account and goes into savings. This forces me to save money. Screw motivation.
• I set my posts to go live. This article was set to go live today at 6am long before it was complete. This deadline forced me to complete the article.
• I only do the main lifts at the gym. I don’t waste any time or accept any excuses at the gym. I go in and perform deadlifts, squats, bench, shoulder press, and pullups.
• I reach out to one reader/peer per day. I have to reach out to someone.
• I write 1,000 words per day. My day isn’t over until a 1,000 words are written.

What systems will you create to force you to focus and get work done on your own?

Are you ready to focus?

It’s your turn to focus now. You don’t have to do everything at once. One step at a time beats doing nothing.

Once you get more focused and better at getting things done, you’ll notice better results with your freelancing/side business. I couldn’t make any money until I buckled down and figured out how to actually get work done. Now I’m unstoppable. I dare you to test me. It has been a fun ride. I even got to visit Austin, Texas because of my freelance work.

You can take 10-minutes today to go for a walk or bust out some pushups. Then you can try to brainstorm ideas or strategies for finding clients for your new freelancing idea.

I promise you that once you’re feeling confident, you’ll have no difficulties with getting work done and working for yourself.

You found out that one of your skills could be turned into a freelancing service. You found clients for this service. Clients are interested. It’s time to present your rates.

BOOM! It happens. The clients find out about your rates and they BOUNCE. They run away. Your rates suck and nobody wants to pay them.

Sure you could blame your clients and call them cheap. That won’t get us anywhere though. You should know by now that the goal is to find clients that are willing and capable of paying for your services. These are people that have a pain and want to pay for it to be resolved.

You need to get your rates under control. This is why I’m going to share a cool little bit of advice for you to never screw up your rates as a freelancer again…

This is why we’re going to get into the art of mental accounting.

Have you heard of mental accounting? I first heard of it from the clubbing perspective from Ramit Sethi. Girls will get mad when they find out that there’s cover at a club because they weren’t expecting it. In their mind they thought that cover was free. $20 is $20 too much.

Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about mental accounting:

“In mental accounting theory, framing means that the way a person subjectively frames a transaction in their mind will determine the utility they receive or expect.”

How does mental accounting apply to your pricing as a freelancer?

You have to be 100% realistic about what you charge and why you charge this.

We all stand behind our work. That’s awesome. However, others don’t care as much. Nobody is going to pay you $100 for your eBook. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into it. That’s your problem. When we do mental accounting, we don’t see eBooks as being expensive products. We don’t have certain types of work as being worth the big bucks. It’s just the way it is. Don’t get mad at me.

Before you even start to think about the ballpark for your pricing, you must think about what you would pay for such a service.

Would you pay a personal trainer $25/session. Yes. What about $50? Maybe. What about $200/session. Highly doubt it. You just couldn’t justify paying so much money for something that you don’t view as being worth it. In our minds, we imagine what a certain type of good or service is worth.

How do you price your services?

It all depends on what your service is. What are you offering? You need to absolutely be able to answer the following questions:

1. What service are you offering?
2. Who are you offering it to?
3. What’s the expected result from this service? <– Must be quantifiable.

Conventional advice is to focus on value. What value are you providing?

My simple advice here is to look around at what others are charging for this exact type of work. You can charge a little more or a little less. If you want to charge a ton more, you need to offer amazing value. You can’t charge $500 for your personal training service per session unless you’re Anderson Silva offering training for an upcoming fight.

How does the art of mental accounting work for freelancing?

Think of what comes to mind when you think of the service or product that you’re offering.

How much would you pay? How much money do these clients even have? How much is this service really worth?

I hope that you use mental accounting in your freelancing business. I don’t want to see you screw up your freelancing rates. You don’t want to charge too much and get no clients. You also don’t want to be the person that’s working for near-free.

When’s the last time you had sex?

That’s what I ask anyone that tries to give dating advice. Being in my mid-20s, dating is a common topic. Everyone thinks that they’re an expert on dating and life in their 20s. So I get to the bottom of it. I ask about results.

If you want to give advice or be perceived as an expert, you need results in the field.

If you haven’t worked out recently or had sex, then don’t give anyone unsolicited training tips on how to get in shape or improve their social life.

Expertise is about results. If you want to make money teaching something, you have to prove that you know what you’re doing. Check out my video…

When you’re the best in the world or the best in your part of the world at something, you can charge the best rates.

My buddy Justin who I mention on here often, has been playing guitar for years. He has invested tons of money into his own skill, from formal education to training sessions with the top players around the world. Now he can charge the best rates for his guitar lessons.

I do a lot of freelance writing on financial topics because I’ve been living it for years. I’ve saved tons of money, tried out every technique out there, and seen real results.

You can’t get into freelancing on a topic until you have results in that field. We all want to work with someone that comes off as an expert in that field.

How do you build expertise?

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.” – Niels Bohr

The good news is that every single person reading this can create expertise. We can all become experts at something. At anything. You don’t even have to spend a small fortune nor do you need to spend years in school. Education isn’t always the key to expertise. Especially not formal education.

How do you convince others that you’re the best in the world at what you do?

• Achieve your own results. You want to teach guitar? Then learn how to play it! You want to coach freelancers? Then start freelancing first. It’s actually a really simple process. Achieve your own results that are valid, undeniable, and amazing.
• Teach one person. Once you go through the process the best thing to do is to teach one person. Get a buddy or a family member on board. Get them to see similar or hopefully better results. You have yourself your first piece of proof.
• Create a case study. Now you can create a case study. Show your own results and highlight how you helped someone else out. This will be your proof. This will help convince others that you’re the best in the world that you do. There’s nothing better than the student becoming the teacher.
• Live it. Stop preaching and keep on living it. Be a living proof of what can happen. This is contagious and will attract like-minded folks. They will gravitate towards you. Keep on leading by example. When you’re average you feel the need to tell everyone. When you’re great, everyone tells you.

That’s how any of us can become experts at something.

What about credentials?

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” - Winston Churchill

The million dollar question remains: what about credentials and what comes after your name? Is it important to have credentials to become an expert or even a freelancer? Not at all. At least in my experiences.

You don’t need your MBA to give business advice. You don’t need to be a doctor to give sex advice.

You can build expertise right now. With proven results and techniques that work, nobody will care about what school you graduated from.

What are you going to become the best in the world at? Actually wait –

How do you become the best in the world?

Becoming the best in the world refers to your world or your pocket of the universe. As mentioned above, there are four battle-tested tips for convincing others that you’re an expert in your field. But how do you actually become that expert? My favorite and most practical tips for those of us that are short on time and money are:

1. Daily practice. If you’re not willing to put in the effort on a daily basis, then you won’t make it. All you need is a few minutes a day to build the habit and to get better. You won’t see results if you only try once in a while. Daily practice is crucial.
2. Learn from the best. Cut your learning curve by 99%! Just learn from the best. Pay others for training, find a mentor, and do anything possible to surround yourself with those that are better than you. Learn from the best and you’ll become the best.
3. Narrow in. Get more specific. Become the best at something very narrow. It will happen much quicker than trying to become the best at something too general. Nobody cares about general. There are no “general” magazines.
4. Become better than the general population. Once again, you don’t have to win a reality show to prove that you’re decent at what you do. You just have to become better than the general population.

You can become the best at what you do and convince others that you truly are what you say you are. It’s up to you now!

Are you ready to start building expertise?

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” — Bruce Lee

“You should quit your job and follow your passions. Everything will be okay. Don’t mind the lack of food on your table.” — clueless entrepreneurs online.

Many questions will pop up when you first start freelancing or getting into this whole crazy world where you make your own money. Whenever I speak to a friend about the idea of freelancing they get all sorts of crazy ideas. The questions are fairly common:

• Should you quit your job?
• Should you follow your passions?
• Should you keep your job and not worry about anything else?
• Why would you leave a stable job?
• Should you work your way up the ranks at your job?

There are so many questions when it comes to making money on this planet. I was with a friend at lunch last week and a bunch of these questions came up. This person is fed up with work and wants something more. They want to know what’s next.

I have a solution to all of these concerns.

Do you want to make more money?

Do you want to finally go after that crazy idea that has been on your mind?

You likely answered yes because you’re here. You just don’t want to quit your job because you have bills, debt, and life to deal with. It’s INSANELY CARELESS to suggest to someone that they quit a job. Why would anyone throw money away? It’s also foolish to not go after your interests.

This is why…

I must introduce you guys to the hybrid approach to making a living on this planet.

How does the hybrid approach to earning a living work?

You freelance for money and you keep a part-time gig.

You don’t quit work altogether. You don’t rely on your freelancing 100%. You freelance and you maintain a part-time job. You can ask to scale back the hours at your current job or you can find a new side gig.

This part-time work allows you to have money coming in while you ruthlessly test out your freelancing ideas. The trick is to start freelancing while you’re already working full-time and to slowly transition to part-time work. I don’t want you guys to be tweeting me up to say that you’re starving.

Ideally, you also maintain some sort of investment or passive income sources. You can put money aside into a savings account, investment, rental property or anything else.

What are the benefits of this approach?

Hmm there are many…

“Our parents and grandparents believed you should stay at a job for five years, 10 years or even your whole life. But in a world where companies come and go — where they grow from nothing to the Fortune 500 and then disappear, all in a few years — that’s just not possible.” — Seth Godin

• You don’t rely on one source of income. Nothing is guaranteed. Times have changed. You just can’t rely on one source of income for the rest of your life.
• You’re social. You actually get to be around people. I love working because I get to meet new characters at the job and whoever else you interact with.
• You’re far more flexible. They say that he who cares least always wins. A freelancer with another job has many options. You don’t have to cling on to crappy clients. Nor do you have to put up with crap at your job.
• You can move on. The ability to move on in life is amazing. Your freelancing idea not working out? Move on. Sick of your job? Move on.

There are many benefits to having multiple sources of income. I firmly believe that it’s worth giving a shot.

I personally always see myself holding down a side job. I could never go all in or focus on just one job. Maybe that’s just me. I realize that times are tough. I don’t want anyone reading this to go without an income. I would feel horrible.

Is diversification dangerous?

The obvious rebuttal to a hybrid approach is that you’re diluting focus. This is very true. If you plan on becoming a lawyer or something highly specific, you shouldn’t dilute your focus at all. You should go all in. With freelancing you can afford work because you’re going to have lots of downtime throughout the week.

The other issue is your full-time job. This one isn’t easy. One of my friends did this recently and he lined up a weekend job before he quit. He now has a ton of time to work on his business and only a weekend gig to worry about.

Long story short: diversification is dangerous if you plan on getting into a highly specific field. As a freelancer, you can afford to work a job on the side.

Would you be willing to give the hybrid income approach a try?

Go after your freelancing or business ideas, while you still have some money coming in to cover the basics.

I would never ever tell you to quit a job without a backup plan. That’s just careless and embarrassing. We all have bills to pay. I don’t even know how someone could possibly sleep without any income coming in or a guaranteed plan. That’s just too stressful for me.

This is the ultimate approach for happiness, income, and balance in life. You can still plan trips and create your own schedule. You only have to worry about performing less than 20 hours of work per week.

If you’re going to fail, you fail fast.

I apply this logic to every area of my life. From new freelancing ideas to even dating. If someone is not interested in you, then there’s nothing that you can do. If the date isn’t going well, then gracefully leave. If a movie sucks, walk out. If your freelancing idea sucks, find a new one! Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Don’t waste time.

But wait, isn’t quitting the worst atrocity that a human being can commit?

Not at all. We’ll cover that.

Here’s a quick story on knowing when to quit and bow out before you look like a fool…

I was on vacation recently. I love to get away from the Canadian winters and just enjoy the sun. There was a dude on the trip that I couldn’t believe. It was 4 in the morning and he was sitting with this lady awkwardly beside the buffet. She clearly had no interest in him. They stopped me for an awkward conversation as I was walking by. I didn’t want to be apart of this embarrassment. I told them that I had to go. They hung around each other being all weird all week. It was pretty funny actually.

The next day I asked the guy:

Why didn’t you just cut your losses? She clearly didn’t want to sleep with you or have anything to do with you.

Then I asked the girl the same question. She obviously didn’t want to be around this guy. Why bother sticking around?

I’ve actually found myself asking this question a lot recently and thinking about quitting.

Another friend asked me to check his ex-girlfriend’s Facebook for updates after she kicked him out of their place. If something isn’t working you need to move on. You moved out and were banned on Facebook for a reason.

I used to try to convince students to care about my personal finance site, Studenomics. That’s not how it works. Random students didn’t care. I wasn’t able to convince young people to care about their money.

What’s the deal with calling it quits?

Why do we not call it quits? TIME!

Time is the reason. We feel that because we’ve commited time to something that we should continue. This is the same logic that we use when we open up a bag of chips.

“Well the bag is already open. Might as well eat the whole damn thing.” — me

Money comes and goes. Time goes and never comes back. Yet, once we spend time on something, we become compelled to spend even more time on this thing.

What about Studenomics? Now I write amazing content and let ambitious young people come to me. My goal isn’t to convince you that you have a problem. I want those with a problem looking for solutions to find me and my solutions.

The final reason for not calling it quits is society/pride. Winners never quit and quitters never win, right? The quotes are endless. Society tells us not to quit and to keep on keeping on. While this is a great attitude to get through exams, it doesn’t help with making money as a freelancer.

When do you finally cut your losses as a freelancer?

This is easy and I’ll keep these brief.

When you can’t find a market.

Who will you offer your services to? If you can’t answer this then move on until you can. Trust me. Being everything to everyone doesn’t work.

When you’re making no money.

Money is good for keeping score of your freelancing services. When you can’t find any sources of income, your freelancing idea sucks. Move on!

When you have zero results.

Zero results after six months = time to move on. Don’t worry about tweaking or sulking. Just move on brothers and sisters.

When you hate the work.

Imagine if you went to a personal trainer that hated the gym or despised working out? You would bail right away! The same goes for your freelancing work. If you hate the work, then find something that you enjoy. I don’t want a miserable graphic designer that hates the world to design my next logo.

Those are the 4 key points that will identify when you show bow out as a freelancer and move on to the next idea. The great news is that ideas are always coming and going. So don’t stres if your current idea didn’t work out.

What have I quit?

I have quit many things in my life. When you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to something else. There’s an opportunity cost in everything that we do.

Playing guitar. Was I even being realistic here?

Dancing. I have two left feet. My first long-term girlfriend made me sign up for lessons. My second girlfriend was the best dancer on this planet. I could NOT for the life of me pick up any moves. I’ve just given up. I now focus on my beer drinking when I go out. You want to challenge me? Loser has to cover the tab.

Random blog ideas. I always come up with random blog ideas. Not sure why, but I do. Recently I dropped like 5 domains because I didn’t have the time, energy or ambition to do anything with them. I quit so that I could focus more energy on this that.

Hint: I’m very passionate about freelancing!

How do you overcome the fear of failure/quitting?

I love to read a lot. You know, when I’m hungover or waiting for a girlfriend to get changed or when sitting on a long bus ride. I’ve read ton about quitting and failure. I’ve experienced both. I’ve watched others experience both.

How can you handle failure?

Not care? Move on? Laugh? Drink? Move on?

“We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works.” — Seth Godin

Can you prevent failure?

Yes. Be realistic with what you can do and are willing to do. I can work my ass off. I can hustle. I can’t do work that bores me. I can’t run a credit card balance transfer blog. So I won’t do this.

The key takeaway here is simple: don’t be afraid of quitting. You should always be striving to move on to bigger and better things.

“If you enter a niche because you’re following the dollars, you wont keep it up. It’s too much work, and you will get tired and frustrated and you will eventually fold.” – Gary Vaynerchuk