 This message, this video is for all you freelancers out there, all you entrepreneurs, not just freelance translators, freelance designers, freelance researchers, freelance teachers, anything, you know, people working on your own. Basically entrepreneurs. This is for all of you. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar to you. Hey, can you run some errands for me this afternoon since you're not stuck in the office all day like me? Of course you can have another drink. It's not like you have to wake up early tomorrow morning. Come on, drink up, drink up. So what is that you do all day? Life's like so easy for you because you don't have to deal with a job. Like, oh my god. Most likely if you work on your own, if you're a freelancer of any type, then some of these, you've heard some version of these before and most likely they make you so irritated you want to break stuff. If by chance you're not an entrepreneur, you're not a freelancer and you're watching this video but you have friends who are entrepreneurs and freelancers, keep this in mind. These comments are some of the most annoying things you can ever hear. When you work on your own. This is the world of being your own boss, of working for yourself, of freelancing, of entrepreneurship, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The fact is, when you first start out, people aren't going to take you seriously. I mean, how could they? To them, a job is a place where you have to go, you do what your boss tells you. Your boss is breathing down your neck, making sure you do what they tell you and then you follow orders and wait for your paycheck. That's how it works. It's a very passive way to go ahead with life, if you will. Because you go there, do what you're told, collect your paycheck, go home. While on the other hand, your way of life is probably the most active imaginable because you have to take the action and you have to decide every single aspect of what you do. I mean, sure, you could, if you wanted, stay at home and watch TV, practice your dance moves, just scroll down Facebook all day or something like that, but then you won't make rent. You won't have any money. You'll be living under a bridge. So you have to be your own boss. You have to be your own employee. You have to be your middle manager and your intern all in one. Even if you do all this, you're still not guaranteed a paycheck. Nothing is predictable in this line of work. Probably the best analogy I've heard is that an entrepreneur is someone who works 16 hours a day, so they don't have to have a job. Given all this, I find it extremely important as an entrepreneur to have a support group. And this goes in line with some of the stuff I've said in earlier videos about finding other people who are like you, people to draw inspiration from and also comfort from because you need people who are doing what you're doing, who are in your same shoes. This is your livelihood and it's only as real as you make it. So if you have a bunch of friends and ex-co-workers and stuff like that who keep asking you to get in the right to IKEA because it's not like you're doing anything, I mean, yeah, you could do that in theory, but just know that if you do this, you're admitting several things. First of all, you're admitting that your friend's time is more important than your own, whoever's asking you to go to IKEA. Secondly, you're also admitting that you're available in the future for any future errands because as long as you don't have a pre-determined emergency, then your friend can say, look, if you come, I'll buy you some drinks. And so right away, you're saying, okay, I've done it now. I'll do it in the future because why wouldn't I? You know, I did in the past. It also shows that if you can run your friends errands during work hours, you can also do other stuff rather than work. So work isn't all that important. Lastly, but definitely not least is that your friend's viewpoint of your life is reinforced, but that it's not a real job and you're not really doing anything real. I find that the best way to avoid this is to surround yourself with other entrepreneurs once again. Like I mentioned before, there are various ways you can go about this. You can join meetups. You can join internations. You can join co-working spaces and stuff like that. Another advantage of a co-working space is that it gives you an office to go to. So if a friend calls you says, hey, can you help me do this or that? You can say, no, I'm heading off to the office right now or we're still at the office and you get to call it an office because let's face it, if you work from home, it's kind of hard to call it an office. I still try to refer this as my office and say I'm in my office. These are office hours, but you know, let's face it. Everyone knows you're working from home and it's hard for them to change your mentality. The main point, you have to take your work seriously. It's only as serious as you make it. So you have to be strict about it. And if this means telling your friend, you know, I'm at work now, I'm sorry, then so be it. Note that if they were at work and you call them for, you know, helping you run an errand or something like that, that's the exact answer they would give. And if you were in a co-working space, then you'd probably give the same answer as well or at least it will be easier to give that same answer because you are in an office. This video is actually in response to a comment I received from Maria Almeida. I apologize if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. She wrote, as a comment to one of my other videos, she basically wrote that she finds it extremely frustrating to deal with all the comments about how freelancing is not a real job and assuming that she has all the time in the world to run errands because she works from home. And so I just want to make this video in response and to tell you that I feel you, all of the freelancers and entrepreneurs out there feel you. And that's why it is important, I think, to find this support system. I mean, it's a group of friends or, you know, a group of people who are doing similar things because we work for ourselves. So I hope you found this video useful. If you do work for yourself and and I hope you can see that, you know, you're not alone. There are plenty of other people in your same boat. Also, if you are not a freelancer or entrepreneur, I hope you were able to see this video and maybe be a bit more supportive of your friends who are setting out on their own and who are trying to create something out of nothing and, you know, to treat their time as real work time. Yes, I hope you found it useful regardless. If you did, please click like because that always helps. And don't forget to subscribe and you'll get more videos about freelancing about freelance translation in the future. And that's about it for now, though. I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.