Speaker 1: What should you do right now to become a freelancer in 2022? Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. I hope you're all doing well and I hope my voice will last. As you can hear the voice is not really stable at the moment. I'm filming this the morning after our housewarming party here so my voice has seen better days but it doesn't matter I still want to record this video. We are just about to enter the last month of the year and I know for a fact that a lot of you guys out there watching this video right now have big plans for 2022, right? You set yourself a goal that yes, next year I'm gonna start this freelance career, I'm gonna put all my eggs into one basket and just go for it. This video is mostly based on freelance translation but it's really applicable to any kind of freelancer. So if you're watching this and you want to become a designer january 3rd or a consultant whatever this is also for you i just thought i make this quick video with tips that you should do before you start out your freelance career you have about one month left so that's more than enough time to do all these steps and if you do them you will be ready you will be prepared for january 3rd to start off your new career i wasn't really sure how to structure this video properly because i had a lot of ideas and I wanted to, like, yeah, make it into chunks that you can actually digest while watching it. So I decided to structure the video into four broad categories. Within them, there are then subtopics within the different categories. Before we get into it, make sure to scroll down and subscribe to the channel. I see in my analytics that 72% of people watching are not subscribed, which is great. Thanks for coming on the channel. Welcome. We are so close of hitting 8,000 subscribers by the end of the year. That would be amazing. So if you want to be part of this community and you enjoy this kind of content, make sure to hit subscribe. All right, let's get into it. As I said, I structure them quite broadly. So category one I named make sure you're ready. And what I mean by this is not necessarily in terms of ability, that's also important. Like I made a video once about imposter syndrome and that was actually really popular. You can click here if you're interested. Because a lot of people don't start because they think they are not good enough, right? But that's not exactly what I mean here. What I mean more with the first category, make sure you're ready, is in terms of finances for example. A lot of people that ask me like when is it feasible to go freelance, I often say that you should have at least a financial cushion to fall back on of let's say six months to a year. If you can actually survive six months to a year without having any income, you at least don't have this external pressure that you need to make money to survive, right? Another topic in this category would be the workspace. Think to yourself, like, can you actually work from home? Do you have the space? Do you work, do you still live at your parents? Do you have only a bedroom? Do you have a shared flat, you know, and it's not really advised or not really welcome to work from there, right? These are all things that you have to consider. So for me, this part was clear. It's fine. I can work from home. If you can't do that, maybe make sure to go into your town, go into your city, figure out where you could work from. If there is a shared office space, a co-working space, a work-friendly cafe where you can work from, all these things you should consider because if then it happens that you suddenly get a big job and you have nowhere to work from and you have to work from your bed, that's not really ideal, right? And another topic in this category are the legal bases. Make sure your legal bases are covered. Not in every country you can just start to work as a freelancer from scratch, right? For example, in Switzerland, you actually have to provide already a certain amount of customers a certain amount of revenue before you can register in the Netherlands where I first started and also here in Belgium you don't have to do that you can just register you just pay a small fee and then you have to go through all the you know you have to find a social security you have to find a VAT number you have to open a professional bank account you have to subscribe to some kind of social security fund there are a lot of things that come with registering as a freelancer I can make a separate video on this if you want let me know in the comments if that interests you of course that would be very country specific but I can just share my experience that I had and then also make sure you understand the tax system in your country right it's very important because you don't want to suddenly like find a couple of jobs and it goes on and on and you don't have time anymore to figure out the taxes and then at the end of the year you you notice oh I'm not even registered as a freelancer and I can't pay taxes it can haunt you later later on, right? Because they can actually reverse charge you for taxes you haven't paid. Just if you have a month now, figure out all your legal basis, what you have to do to make sure to start on January 3rd. This leads me to category two, which I named professional setup. And registering is definitely also part of the professional setup, right? You have to do that to be able to work. But what I mean more here is like, you're just your professional life, how you structure this. Number one point, I wrote it in capital here in my notes, don't quit your day job if you have one. That's really important, I give this advice to everyone that asks me. I wouldn't go 100% into freelance once you start. If you have the option to reduce a percentage of your day job, if you go maybe 60% and 40% you work on your freelance dream, or if you're a student and maybe you're just writing your thesis, that was my case, so I wasn't really a full-time student, even though the thesis writing is technically full-time, but it was quite easy for me to write this thesis. So I had a lot of time next to it. So I was basically part-time student, part-time freelancer. If you can structure your professional setup somehow like this, that's the best way to go because you don't have the pressure in the beginning. The same with the reserves that I just mentioned with the financial reserves, right? The more pressure you can take off of yourself to succeed in the beginning, the more likely it is you will succeed, if you know what I mean. At least for most people. Some people really need this pressure to just push themselves to succeed. If that's you, of course, go for that. That's just my advice to give, right? Next up in this category, make sure to read up on how to start and how to lead and how to manage a business. It's so important. A lot of translators, a lot of freelancers, they are creative, they are great at what they do, but they can't lead a business. And it comes with the job, right? You are your own boss, you are your own business, you do register at the Chamber of Commerce, so you are a legal entity. And it's so important that you know business education, at least like the basics, that you know your accounting, that you know what it means to generate leads, that you know how to negotiate, that you know how to write professional cover letters, professional emails, letters. Of course, you don't need to actually know how to lead an international, multinational company, right? That's not the point, but you do want to grow your business. You do want to maybe expand later on, maybe have employees, maybe. You know, it's, if you have no business education, you have no background, you have never read a book about anything starting a business, you will struggle a lot. I actually link a few books in the description. Some of them are only business related. Some of them are actually linguistic business related. So if you want to pick them up, make sure to check them out. And the last point I have in this category is insurance. Make sure to read up the insurance that you need in your country, especially for certain kind of freelance professions. really important to have an indemnity insurance right in case something goes wrong and then you make a mistake you i don't know you you miss a you miss a deadline and this has implications for the end client so for some sectors it's super important so insurance is definitely something to have on your radar make sure to read what you need in your country so once you have these official let's call them categories out of the way you can focus on yourself on your brand on your name on on your marketing, right? So category three, I named get your name out there. And this is important and you really have actually not enough time to do that when you only start now, you only have four weeks, but it is still a great period of time to do it, right? Ideally, you do this maybe half a year before you start or maybe a few months before you start. But if you just have this one month, that's fine, go for it. Create your own brand, think of a brand name. If you want to go with your own name, that's great. If you want to create some kind of fictional brand name, a newly generated company name, that's also fine. Make sure to think of the domain as well when you create a brand name, right? If you have a brand name, check if the domain is available, because you should really consider buying a domain. It's not expensive, really. You don't really need to buy the .com domain, these are usually more expensive. Maybe buy the one from your country. If you're from Italy, buy the .it, buy the .ch from Switzerland, whatever it is. Once you've created a brand name, buy a domain and also buy within the domain, buy an email. So you have an email ending with your domain. Then the next step in this category would be setting up all the profiles on freelancer websites, right? For translators, watch this video, I mention all the profiles that you should generate and create. That's really important because then you are set up on January 3rd, you can just go on on these profiles and look for clients. You don't have to actually start creating the profiles only then, right? And also make sure to connect on LinkedIn, build a network in the industry that you work in, start to generate content, let your network know that you will start next year. You know, it's interesting, like, if you can write a perfectly written engaging post about your future goals, your goals next year, you will start on January 3rd with this and this language pair. It's really engaging and you will get a lot of responses from the translators' community. Make sure to use the hashtags that are used in your sector's LinkedIn community and then you can already ease your way into there, you know. And then the people that like your stuff, you can reach out to them, you can look at their posts and build a connection already, build a network already before you start. In terms of translation, if you speak to a lot of experienced translators in your language pairs that's amazing because they will feel like oh you know this guy is starting new and he's reaching out to me that makes them feel good right and they probably want to help you it's a great way to build a connection and who knows maybe they find a job and they need a newbie and to help them out and they might give you the job right and the last category number four I named make a business plan and by making a business plan I don't mean like the official like business plan that you have in certain countries that comes from the government or the chamber of commerce. You can do that, of course, if you want. But there are a lot of questions and a lot of projections in there that you don't need as a freelancer. But what I did, I said this on the channel many times, I did a three year plan. I started in 2016, I made a plan until 2019. Every year I wrote my goals in terms of numbers, in terms of revenue and profit I want to make, but also in terms of soft goals. So not in terms of numbers, but in terms of what I want to do, what clients I want to find what my goals are. Sorry, my memory card was full there. I had to delete some files. Where was I? So yes, make a business plan. What I also mean by that is create a portfolio, right? Start working on volunteering jobs. Start reaching out to people that you know, friends that you can translate. Start reaching out to YouTubers, content creators, maybe articles, magazines where you can ask them if you can translate for them. All this is great content to actually build a portfolio on and then you can build in your LinkedIn you can name all these things that you've done and then you're already not a newbie anymore you already have experience right also in this category think about your services that you want to offer right if you're a translator think if you want to offer translation proofreading reviewing subtitling voiceover language consultancy all of these things or only one of them it doesn't matter right figure it up for yourself and then also think about your rates. Set your rates, set your prices. That depends on wherever you live of course. Think of what you need as a person to live but not only to live because you don't want to just work for minimum wage so you can live, right? Think of what you want to earn so you can actually build a business, scale a business. Think also of your price per hour that you want to have. Maybe reach out to other translators in your network, ask them. Maybe they are willing to share their information with you or more or less like a guidance in this language pair at least. Set a routine I also wrote down here. Just think to yourself like when do you want to work? Because you are a freelancer, you have the option to work from 9pm to 3am if you want to, right? Figure out what works for you. For me it turns out I work best just more or less 9 to 5, right? It's more like 8 to 6 but normal business hours because then I'm there for my clients and like everyone in my surroundings works at this time so i want to have time when the other my friends and family are not working right this doesn't need to be the same for you right figure out what works for you maybe you're the person that wakes up at 4 a.m stops at 2 p.m perfectly fine and the last point i wrote down here is cut tools you don't need to buy a cut tool yet you can just figure out maybe use the trial versions of memo q sdhrados look up the online ones like memsource like smartcat figure out what works for you just so you gain some some kind of idea of what's out there of course this is very translator specific if you are in another sector make sure to figure out your your own tools all the tools that are out there you should know at least by name and or by yeah by association at least so when a client actually asks you if you can work with that you can say not yet but i know it and if you give me a license i gladly work for you on this. And then once you actually find clients within this tool, you can think about buying it. There you go. These are my tips for people that think about starting in 2022. I think it's a great idea. The market is fresh, the market is there. A lot of people are looking for freelancers. There's a shortage in many areas. So I definitely get why you want to get into it. Make sure to use this month wisely before you start. It's tempting to just lean back and say I'm gonna start in the new year, but if you start now, you're already one month ahead of everyone else that starts in the first of January, right? Let me know in the comments if you are one of these people that will start, and I would love to hear about your progress throughout the year, I'm very interested in that always, and feel free to reach out to me for tips anytime. Have a good day, I'm gonna drink some tea to save my voice, and see you next Monday with the next video. Bye bye.