 Okay, let's try that okay, so my name is Carrie Putman and this session is Full-time to freelance practical and self-care advice when the nine to five needs to stop And so let me tell you a little bit about my freelance story 25 years ago, I developed my first professional website now I know this looks state-of-the-art. This is 1997, okay, and that's not even the first one The first one I did was in 93 so It's something I ended up doing by chance my my degrees actually in psychology and it turned out to be something that I love to do so Over the years. I learned all I could about programming database development and project management I worked mostly as a government contractor, but my last position was a senior programmer analyst at a credit union Now around the same time that I developed that first website. I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and It's something I ended up having by genetic chance, and it's completely changed my life Now it's an autoimmune disease of the digestive system, and I can explain it in two slides This is what most people's digestive system looks like and that's what mine feels like Over all those years as a full-time developer. I had eight surgeries I had more hospitalizations and ER visits than I could count and I had several stents on short-term disability Each time that I took leave My plan was to get better and deaf in everybody Yes, unfortunately, we had to be might for two things Okay, so try that again so Every time that I took leave my plan was To take this mic off. Can y'all hear me without this? Okay Okay, how about now? Can you hear me? Awesome good deal. Okay, so like I said my goal was to always get back to work But two years ago it became obvious that that was not working for me anymore that my health issues were incompatible with working full-time So there was a decision about what I was going to do And Like most people who were on the internet in the 90s. I Messed around with some of the blog software. Does anybody remember movable type? Oh I am the oldest person in the room. Okay, so that was the first thing I used but then I Used WordPress and I loved it from the first time that I used it so my husband and I had a lot of discussions and I felt that a lot of the businesses and Organizations where we're from we're from Decatur, Alabama Were priced out of the custom website development market? And the only thing they only options they had were to either use something like Squarespace or our hard-go daddy so After a lot of long discussions We decided that I would quit full-time work and work part-time as a freelancer doing WordPress development There are many reasons why people decide to become a freelancer Some like me do it because their health issues have become in it manageable Others leave because they have children or adult family members who need care There's those who current work situations are stressful and unhealthy There's some that just want to retire early And there's others who want to be their own bosses and have the infamous four-hour work week But there to me are a few important advantages to being a freelancer First of all, it's a good way to remain productive because more than one in four 20 year olds today Will spend at least one year on disability leave before they retire and in 2014 6.5 percent of people 16 or older reported that they couldn't work at all Do do to a disabling condition? So if you're like me and you find that you can't work full-time anymore Freelancing gives you an opportunity to work at least part-time and remain productive and Actually people with disabilities are more likely to work part-time and they're more likely to be self-employed You also have the ability to have a flexible schedule again in 2014 5.4 percent of people 16 and older reported that home responsibilities were a reason that they had left the workforce and since 1990 Women were primarily have reported that taking care of a family member was the reason that they had stopped working If you freelance You're like you have the ability to create your own schedule and take care of those responsibilities Which is something a nine-to-five job almost virtually makes impossible For me freelancing means that I can make doctor and treatment appointments and I can be I can rest and take off time for illness without having to worry about whether I have sick days or having to file for FMLA leave and then of course there's being your own boss because everyone dreams of running their own show and Freelancing gives you the opportunity to do that You can leave a stressful situation over which you feel you have little to no control and do something that you love Even though I've been a web developer for 25 years the majority of that time was spent as a government contractor So the websites that I did were limited use and I couldn't show them to anybody But now it makes me happy that I can create websites for small businesses Help them become successful and I can show other people The first time I saw the URL of a site. I created on a billboard. I was happy for days called everybody I knew you have to go down 6th Avenue There's a billboard it has a URL that I created on it and feel free to stop me if you have any questions at any point No matter the reason that you choose to move from full-time work to freelancing you can't make that decision in a vacuum The transition is something that affects everything in your life and you need input and support to make the decision and Here are some important things that you need to consider before you turn in your resignation Money You need to be very conservative in your estimates of your future freelance income and If possible, you need to try to save at least six to twelve months of bills Also learn all you can about finance and tax implications as a freelancer Because you don't want to take all that money that you've saved and turn around and pay it to the IRS Take a long look at what you want to charge for your work Don't simply take your current hourly wage and multiply it by a random number You have to take an account taxes and you have to take an account expenses that you'll incur finally try to make any Business or home office purchases while you still have a full-time income especially for large purchases such as a computer Because it could be a while before you make enough freelancing to make those purchases later insurance If you depend on your job for insurance, especially health and life Make sure you have some sort of coverage lined up Move to a spouse's policy, which is what I did Make sure you have continuation coverage or make other arrangements You do not want to be caught with no way to pay large medical bills and you don't want to leave your family Unprotected financially in case something should happen to you networking before you leave your full-time job is important As a full-time employee, you're often not the one that gets the work. You're the one that does the work But once you become a freelancer, you have to do both things Begin networking before you leave your job Go to local meet-ups Reach out to an IT or marketing firm that doesn't have their own web developers on staff Make sure there's a market for what you want to do before you rely on that to pay your bills later It's also important to reach out to groups for continuing education Word camps like this are an excellent way to do that Not only do you get to network with other bloggers designers and developers But you also get to keep up to date with the latest in the WordPress world Finally check into your local business incubators and co-working groups They can offer invaluable information to start in your own business. For example in Decatur They have the Decatur entrepreneurial center and they offer a class called business 101 It teaches you everything you need to know to start your own business So now you've thought about all those things you've made any kind of arrangements you need to make and you're ready to resign your job Now there's a way to do it and There's a way not to do it. Oh, that didn't work. Did it? Okay, let's try again. So don't quit like that. Don't don't do that when you resign You don't want to burn bridges Even though you may not anticipate returning to full-time work You should manage this resignation as you would any other You may need a referral from that company Or if circumstances change you may even want to return to work So if possible give a nice standard notice and don't kick the wastebasket on the way out When you're a freelancer, you're likely going to work from home And it's completely different work reality than a nine-to-five office gig Even with the best intentions, it's easy to become distracted Sidelined or even depressed There's some and these are some of the common potholes that you may encounter not selling yourself Like I said before once you're a freelancer, you're your own sales force and you can't wait for work to come to you You have to come out of your shell and learn to talk about yourself your skills and your fees It's awkward Especially if you're an introvert or like me you've been a web developer for 20-something years and never talked to anybody You have to learn how to talk if you can't tell people what you do and more importantly what you charge to do it You're not gonna have any work coming in ending like you still work full-time It's a big problem Even if you're not the sole breadwinner Going from having a regular full-time paycheck to getting paid when you can get work is a huge financial shock You can't spend assuming that you're gonna make that money up later doing too much Don't forget why it was you wanted to quit your job in the first place If you're chronically ill like me Take care of yourself If you're a caretaker for a family member Make your freelance work revolve around those tasks rather than the other way around After I left my job, I tried to do everything that I didn't have the energy to do while I was working full-time. I Was washing clothes. There's running errands volunteering at church walking the dog and I overlooked the fact that I was taking my nine-to-five job and swapping it for the same number of hours of other work I Paid for it by getting sick, which was what I was trying to avoid isolation no matter how much you may not want to even programmers at a full-time job have to interact with people daily and The friends that you've made while working Are often still working full-time And so They're not people that you can interact with when you're a freelancer as much As a freelancer, it's easy to close off and only interact with your computer So in addition to avoiding those particular potholes There are also some suggestions to make your freelance work as productive as it can be Create a dedicated space to work This is actually my desk at home That is a Yoda Yard statue behind my laptop. I was afraid it would get stolen if I actually put it in the yard, so My original place to program was in a recliner in front of the television set and As a person with fatigue problems how successful successful. Do you think I was at that? Not very I got lots and apps in though, but didn't get a lot of work done So my husband has created a home office for me And it's where I have a specific place to work and not for Netflix and chill When I'm in the office my husband and my dog who actually has a bed in my office knows I'm in work mode and If I'm in there too long They know to come lure me out and make me rest and interact with the rest of the world and And your mind needs that digimarcation as well Your office tells your brain that it's time to concentrate and get to work You want to document? Oh? I'm sorry. I skipped ahead. I apologize Try to schedule a regular time to work Again, you wanted to be a freelancer for a reason Make sure to accommodate that in the work schedule that you create Making a schedule also allows everyone else to know everyone else to know when to give you space to work I Work from morning to lunch and then again in the early evenings while my husband's a CrossFit. I Have time to take care of myself, which was again my goal and Like I said, he knows to leave me alone and let me work Also, if you have trouble getting motivated at the beginning of your day There's a method called miracle morning and you can look into that. I'll have a link at the end But it's a method for getting yourself motivated in the mornings to getting your day started and that may help you if you have trouble with that document everything especially financial information Buy a notebook start a bullet journal Get an app and enter all your daily tasks most importantly create a system for tracking your project information and If you buy a plug-in or pay for hosting Keep track of all those expenses If you document is go then when you get to the end of a project or the end of the fiscal year You're not going to have to stress out and try to remember what it is you did and why you did it set realistic goals Freelancing can be stressful enough without putting undue pressure on yourself Based on your priorities and your market set goals that are attainable It's okay to be optimistic. It's practically a requirement for a freelancer But you need to balance that optimism with realism Or you're just setting yourself up to fail give yourself solid milestones celebrate your achievements and You'll be more motivated in the end Now whether you work full-time for someone else or you're a freelancer It's important to practice self-care to help manage stress and its effects on your health This not only helps you But everyone who depends on you and here are some ways that are Important for caring for yourself. No jammies Get out of your pajamas. It's very tempting when you work from home to just stay in your pajamas or some ready clothes all day Because you're comfortable and who doesn't want to be comfortable But again, your brain takes cues from your environment and that includes how you dress Now I'm not saying you need to put on a three-piece suit every time you're ready to go in the home office But you know at least brush your hair put on some clothes. You'd wear to the grocery store Because you don't want to rush around looking for suitable clothes if you have a last-minute video conference Make time for yourself that isn't work Everyone needs time to decompress so make sure you're taking some time away from work and from responsibilities on a regular basis Read a book watch a movie Netflix and chill just not in your home office Anything to lower your stress and relax your mind and being a freelancer doesn't mean that you can't take a few days off Take short trips and if you can plan a longer vacation If you don't take time off, you're going to burn out get out of the house If you're working from home, it's easy to forget. There's a world away from your office and your computer And all if you get too isolated you could miss important changes in the market or your field Have lunch with your friends Go to local events Attend work camps. There's a word camp in Nashville in December It's important to maintain contact with the outside world not only for business, but for your own sanity Get some sunshine and take some naps Vitamin D is an important is important in bone health and calcium absorption and the best source for vitamin D is sunlight Also sunlight some mood elevator. So put on some sunscreen and get a little bit of sunshine every day Also take a nap if you need it Naps can restore alertness and help you relax You may not be able to schedule one every day, but it's valuable if you're running low on energy meditate If you want to improve your concentration and lower stress meditation is a great way to do that You can take as little time or as much time to do that as you want You can use a guided meditation or you can just sit and listen to music It's a way to quiet your mind and it's been shown to help metabolism and reduce pain There are a ton of meditation apps available. So just go try some out and pick out your favorite My favorite it's beautify which has guided meditations and a number of categories and Some of these are to help sleep stress and pain You can even ask Alexa Our google home to help you meditate The transition from full-time employment to freelancing is doable But it's important to plan and save the best that you can Most importantly, it's it's important Try that again. Most importantly, remember why it is that you want to freelance in the first place and what you want to accomplish by doing it Set your priorities Take care of yourself and make your work fit into that So I had a link at the beginning And these are the citation that we should download the slides These are the citations to the employment statistics I talked about earlier And then here are some useful links Unsplash if you've never looked at unsplash It is a place to get really nice free stock photos And so all my lovely photos except for obviously my desk And the mem Is from unsplash I mentioned bullet journaling. Does anybody in here do that? The bullet journaling is awesome, especially if you're like me and you can't remember stuff half the time It's a very good method to keep up with your tasks And if you go to bulletjournal.com, it'll tell you everything you need to know About how to do that The next the next link again is miracle morning. That was what I discussed Earlier, it's a method To get you motivated in the mornings A lot of people say that that's really helped them With their work And one of the things that includes which is the next link One of the things that's included in the miracle morning is spending time in meditation So that next link is an article about the benefits of meditation Okay, the last link is to my favorite my favorite meditation app, which is beautify They just released a brand new version. It's very nice And then here's my contact information I'm currently doing freelance work through pro computer services in bestseller media. Like I said earlier try to Partner with somebody who doesn't have their own developer. That would be him. He doesn't have his own He runs pro computer services So I work with him and do his sites for his customers And my personal portfolio site And my twitter handle And I know I talked really fast. I'm sorry So is anybody having questions No, I'm from Decatur, Alabama, which is about 30 miles southwest of huntsville Yeah, the thing about the the area up there is that Decatur is a kind of a small town But huntsville is a big town where All the tech companies are and nasa and an army base So if you work if you're in Decatur and you're a tech person You most likely work in huntsville And so that also adds to the stress of a full-time job up there because you have to drive back and forth to huntsville every day So once you become freelance This is past my stuff too. How do you set goals for yourself to make improvements every every year In how you're building your business. How do you stay on track? How do you know that you're actually accomplishing what you want to do? Well, that's the importance of documenting everything you have to Keep up with The people you've talked to it's basic basically a sales model You have to keep up with who you've talked to who you've set proposals to follow up with people who don't respond People who say no if I haven't been able to do this yet, but you should ask them why they said no I'm still getting there, but You haven't been able to do it. You haven't had an opportunity No, I'm scared to ask people why they said no to be perfectly honest Like I said, I'm I'm for 25 years. I was a hardcore coder And talking to people was not my forte and that is the biggest problem. I've had as a freelancer Is talking to people If I can talk to other tech people, I'm okay And I have a really hard time talking about money I have I know what I should charge. It's telling other people. This is what I charge that I have a problem with Yeah, I'm very nervous. It makes me very nervous still so He helps me with that too but yeah, that's That's one of the things you have to track too is why people said no and so I've set a certain goal for myself based on This is the amount of money I need to pay What I have to pay every month Because the reason I'm doing it is not to you know to fund a whole household I'm freelancing because My health didn't allow me to work full time anymore so If you're doing it however because you're going to be the sole breadwinner and you need to make a certain amount of money Then you have to sit down and figure out how many websites you need to sell Like my number of websites. I need to sell a month. There's going to be a way lower than somebody else Who is doing it as a sole breadwinner of a family So you've really got to track that whole sales process So that you can try to figure out if you're not selling why you're not If it's an issue with communication. You're not communicating your skills. Well, you're charging too much um For instance in our town um People often say like the incubator Where they have the business 101 They call it a walmart town Because people want to pay walmart prices for everything And it doesn't matter what your service is So, you know, you have a hard time in the actual city of decatur sometimes selling a professional service So you have to go outside the city of decatur And so knowing that kind of thing and tracking that kind of thing really helps Yeah, that's part of your market research To be honest the other thing that I struggle with Again as somebody who really didn't I've never had to do sales kind of things before Our clients who say I want you to do this and who will even pay My deposit, but they never give me anything to do the website with And so they've paid me part of their money and I communicate with them on a regular basis and they're like well Not just yet. We'll get back to you Yeah, it's amazing But it happens And so that's another thing I've struggled with is Trying to that fine line of okay It's been this many months since you gave me this much money to do this job that you still haven't given me the information for And like if you've gone Um to any of Nathan's talks Nathan Ingram the organizer Or if you've seen any of his webcasts He has he has a date by which if you don't give them your stuff You've forfeited your deposit And I'm not that's another place. I'm not there yet where I can just say You know, I know you've given me a couple of thousand dollars But it's been six months and you haven't given me anything else. I could I need to do my job So you've forfeited your deposit But that is something that like I said people recommend Right Right. No, you have to tell them from the outset. Yeah, and even if I had told them from the outset I'd still wouldn't I I'm I really struggle with money talk. I mean that is my weakness Because as a As a developer there was somebody else that did all that for me. I just did the work So talking about money makes me nervous Anybody else got a question? So is everybody else still working full-time? You are Yeah, one of the things too that that's hard about freelancing is is the motivation Because when you're full-time you've got somebody there Your stuff done. You've got weekly meetings. Give them your status You know as a freelancer You're on your most of the time you're pretty much on your own so If you don't keep up with your schedule and you don't keep up with your tasks and how long things are taking You may find yourself where it's like, oh, I told them this would be done Oh friday and it's thursday and I don't have it done And it's that's a big part of freelancing is the motivating yourself and keeping up with your own schedule Because as a full-time a full-time employee, you've always got somebody reminding you well originally My clients were We had joined a Preface this with if you're in b&i, I apologize. We joined a b&i chapter and that was where I got my original customers but The thing about b&i that at least on my part. I feel it's not Very technical oriented. So I had a very depends on the chapter the two chapters that we were in were not technically oriented So we had a hard time explaining To people what it is we did And then the other thing is it gets back to But I can do this on Squarespace and it doesn't cost me but five bucks a month Oh, yeah, it's not because it's completely different Or well, I had one person tell me go daddy will only charge me a thousand dollars for a full e-commerce website Well, then you let him do it That's the other thing you've got to be willing just to cut your losses and say No, I'm not going to get in a bidding war with go daddy Because you're most likely not going to win and if you do win you're going to regret it because you're going to be charging So little for your time I'll be honest most of my customers are people who have gotten websites It's kind of like that like at a wicks or a cheap developer And now it doesn't work and they needed Somebody to do a website that works Well, originally through b&i And it's part of that's the networking process, you know, we network with You know And that's what I said about partnering And so if you can if you can find somebody like that to partner with Like we also I also have another friend that's An IT service provider, but he doesn't do websites. So if he gets somebody needs a website, he's going to call me So it's it's good to network with people who are in a similar field But don't do necessarily the exact same thing you do Because when they have somebody that comes to them and say That says I need a website and they don't know how to do it They're going to call me One thing to consider too, which is is something that that i'm I'm looking at right now is to concentrate on a vertical Because otherwise you've got this like shotgun approach where you're just trying to any website I just need to make the bills for this month. And so I'll do it. I don't care But at some point You're going to be more effective if you can concentrate on a vertical market So I am going to concentrate on authors Who need websites that have Specific information They're set up a specific way. I have friends who are authors. I know how this needs to be done And so I know those organizations that I can market to directly rather than like I said just trying to dislike Please let me do your website, you know kind of Kind of approach because it doesn't it'll work for a little while And everybody does that at the beginning everybody's just like I'll do whatever you want me to do You want me to do a landing page? I'll do it and it'll you want me to do for $700 great I need money and you'll do it But at some point you have to you get past that and you learn where you want to focus I have not hard-coded any Let me rephrase that I haven't done any asp.net websites in two years. I do everything in WordPress now And originally this is kind of Technical but originally I was buying themes because I'm a developer not a designer So you see you can usually tell when a developer is designed a website because we're not the most artistic people in the world So I would rely on themes that I would buy And then what would happen is is that theme developer would all of a sudden go? Yeah, I don't want to support this anymore And you couldn't get updates. So now what I do Is I use a builder the one I happen to use is Elementor There's you know beaver builder. There's divi. There's different ones And actually I've gotten to where I can put together A pretty decent website. I mean pretty decent looking website. It doesn't look like A developer did it necessarily And so that's I use WordPress with Elementor And that's what I'm using on all my websites now Yeah, and it's quicker, you know And usually what I would do with the theme anyways I would get it and I would have to go in and change 20 things that I wanted to tweak So now the builder I can do what I want to do the way I want to do it from the get go Any other questions? Well, I appreciate it y'all. This is my first talk ever And I was very very nervous Well, I did a meetup demo one time This is the first time I've ever talked at word camp. So I was extremely nervous and I appreciate Y'all all being patient with me and like I said Um, there's my contact info if there's anything You need Now you can tell me it's five minutes left If you need any, you know an ear To to talk to or just have a question Um, just let me know email me. I'm around like I said, I'm working from home And pretty much, you know, this is my concentration is WordPress. So definitely, you know, if you Need some advice feel free to to email me. So thank you very much