If you’re one of the many unlucky few working in tech who just lost your job as part of the massive layoffs, here are some thoughts from someone who has been laid off three times in the past. (Yes, three times).

First of all, losing your job really hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s okay to feel that.

The first time I got laid off, it was the day before Thanksgiving on the same week that I bought my very first house. I “celebrated” Thanksgiving with my wife and brand-new baby boy as the proud owner of a new home I now couldn’t afford since I was officially unemployed. Let’s just say it was a pretty grim holiday.

The second time I got laid off, I had to walk past my coworkers at the office with all my things in a little cardboard box. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. I wasn’t the first person to get the axe that day, but that didn’t make me feel any better. People were hugging and crying, and it was a sad, chaotic, confusing mess.

The third time I got laid off, I once again took the walk of shame past my friends, this time holding an even smaller cardboard box. Some of my coworkers didn’t even know layoffs were coming, so they stared at me, bug-eyed with confusion, as I packed up my tiny coffee maker, said goodbye, and walked out the door.

I sat in my car with the engine off, unsure of what to do. A profound sense of meaninglessness hit me as I realized that I had nowhere to be and nothing to do.

My schedule was now completely clear… and it was only 11:00 am on a weekday.

I pounded the steering wheel of my Honda Pilot in anger and confusion. It was just me, crying, in the driver’s seat and my mini Mr. Coffee in the passenger seat, staring back at me.

How could this happen?! Three times?!

• Fool me once; shame on you.

• Fool me twice; shame on me.

• Fool me three times; I give up completely and need to rethink my entire life.

Losing your job is depressing, confusing, and dehumanizing. It can make you feel completely unmoored like you’re now floating aimlessly in the ocean without any direction.

What comes next? Where do you go? What do you do now?

What I did was start my own business, so this couldn’t possibly happen a fourth time. Whether that’s in the cards for you or not, here are three very important things you should keep in mind.

#1: They never cared about you in the first place

Seriously, unless you were fired for cause (and I mean real “cause” like fraud), your losing your job has almost nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

Your company was never loyal to you. Employees mean very, very little to their employers.

No matter how often these giant companies say dumb things like: “It’s our people that make the difference,” they don’t believe it.

They never did. They’re proving this to you with their actions right now.

My father-in-law has been a plumber for his entire adult life. He has a “recession-proof” job if there ever was one. During the pandemic, he was definitely an “essential worker.” Yet even he has been laid off throughout his career, more than once.

Many years ago, “Pop Pop” and I were discussing our experiences of losing our jobs, and he shared some words of wisdom with me that I have never forgotten:

“If you want to quit your job, your employer will always expect you to give them at least two weeks of notice. But if they want to lay you off, they’ll fire you in a heartbeat, without notice. Somehow, they act like this is totally fair.”

He’s absolutely right: it’s a one-way street, and it’s extremely hypocritical.

Also, to the people who have ever thought (or who have been told): “We’re like family here” — that’s a complete and utter lie, too.

I should know: the first time I lost my job, I was laid off by a family member. Not even my own family was above laying me off!

(Note: I don’t hold this against them. We’re all good. I’m just pointing out that even literally “being family” won’t save your job if a company isn't financially solvent.)

#2: It’s their fault, but you're the one paying for it

To save money, employers (large companies, especially) will often try reducing their workforce first. As unbelievable as it sounds, employees are actually the most flexible part of their business model.

It’s the quickest-acting lever they can pull. The best way to slash costs is by reducing their payroll as drastically as they can, as fast as they can.

But here’s the thing: none of this has anything to do with you or even your job performance. It’s just the natural fallout of the (often poor or hasty) decisions they made in the past, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

• Did they hire too fast? That's their fault, but YOU will suffer the consequences.

• Did they hire too many people? That’s also their fault, but YOU will pay the price.

• Did they hire the wrong people? Even if YOU are one of those “wrong people” they hired, it’s still their fault.

I’m not trying to be fatalistic here; I’m trying to reassure you that in many (or most) cases, it’s just the harsh reality that when you work for a big company with hundreds or thousands of employees, you are entirely at the whim of higher-ups and the mercy of decisions and guesses they made six months or a year ago.

Companies are like giant ships: when they start sinking, it’s every man for himself, and the people in positions of power are going to make sure you lose your job before they lose theirs.

There’s nothing you can do about that.

Again, I know that’s cold comfort when you’re suddenly unemployed, but it should help alleviate the blame you might feel for not being able to “see it coming” or “do something” about it.

Relax: You never had that power in your hands in the first place.

#3: You should consider starting your own business

This is probably not at all what you had in mind, and the thought of it might even anger you, but if you unexpectedly find yourself without a job yet have in-demand skills, this is actually the PERFECT time to ask yourself if you want to become self-employed.

If you have a severance package, you get major bonus points. This can give you enough runway to get something small off the ground. As I like to remind people all the time: you just need ONE client to have a business.

Every business that has ever been started in history started out with just one customer, then two, then three, and so on. Even giant corporations like Apple and Safeway started out with nothing, got one customer to start, and built from there.

When I started my first business after getting laid off almost 18 years ago, I was totally broke. I literally had no money at all. I didn’t even get severance pay: I was just handed a check and told, “You’re paid up to today. Don’t come in to work tomorrow.”

I started my business out of necessity and had no cushion at all. If you have a cushion, you’re already in a far, far better position than I was in.

If I could do it back then, I really feel like you can do it now.

Finally, I love to remind people about the fact that if you’re self-employed, you can’t get laid off ever again!

If you’re tired of working hard to help other people build their businesses, knowing you can be kicked to the curb at any time, you should take hold of the reins of power!

If you become your own boss, YOU control your own future. There’s a lot more I could say now, but you’re probably still reeling from the shock. I know. I’ve been there, and I’ve felt it.

But let me sign off with two final things:

• First, you CAN do this. I believe in you.

• Second, I am happy to help in any way I can.

Call me at (520) 422-7796 or email me at ron@liederdigital.com if there’s anything I can do.

Recently, I was privileged to be asked to speak at a panel discussion at a local high school during a “career day” event where young professionals (like me) spoke to a leadership class about what life is like after high school and how to jump-start your career after graduating.

I was one of four speakers, and I was impressed with the diversity of our group: there were two men and two women; one worked for a university, one worked for a bank, one worked for a private company, and then there was me—the only entrepreneur. Also, our educational experience was quite varied: two people had master’s degrees, one had no college at all, and one person (me) had a bachelor’s degree.

Opportunities like this are something I always take seriously, not just because I want to help young people who are wondering what to do with their future, but also because it helps me understand myself better and “frame” my own past in a deeper way. For example, how often do people ask themselves, “If you could go back in time and give your high-school-aged self advice, what would you say?” Odds are, not very often.

During the discussion, a moderator asked us some pre-selected questions, then opened up the floor for questions from the kids. Not all of the questions were profound, of course, and not all of the answers were life-changing, but there were a few things I think are worth sharing since I think they’re helpful to anybody considering becoming self-employed; not just high schoolers.

At this event, I was the only self-employed person in the room, so I was honored to be there representing entrepreneurs. It’s definitely the road less traveled, and I am very often one of the only (if not the only) freelancers or solopreneurs in a room filled with other business people. Very often, I’ll meet 10, 20, or even 30 people at a business networking event or chamber mixer, and maybe 2 or 3 of them are self-employed. Everyone else works for big corporations with salaries, benefits, retirement plans, and the “security and stability of a stable paycheck.”

Sometimes this makes me feel like a social outcast, like there’s something wrong with me since I don’t fit neatly into the same mold as everyone else. So, on this day, being asked to go speak to high schoolers was great because it was nice to be in a room where I was treated as an equal to people who work for large financial companies and who have MBAs or MPAs. It’s also nice because I like telling school-aged kids that “there are other options besides just going to college.”

So, having said all that, here’s a selection of questions I was asked in our panel discussion, lightly edited for grammar and brevity. I hope the high schoolers we spoke to found it helpful, and I hope anybody else reading this does as well.

Q: What’s your name and position, and what does your organization do?

My name is Ron Stauffer, and my company is Lieder Digital. I build websites, and perform digital marketing and SEO (that’s search engine optimization). So, basically, I’m self-employed. I have a small company that I run myself. So, it’s mostly just me. I have a virtual assistant but essentially, this is it: this is my whole company - my whole office, in my backpack right here.

Q: What was your career path, and how did you end up in your current role?

Well, I took a very complex, expensive, complicated, nontraditional, circuitous path to my career… long story short, my wife and I got married when she was 19 and I was 20. We were both going to community college at the time, but we became parents right away.

So what that basically meant was it took me 16 years to finish going to college. So, there was a lot of night school, a lot of weekends, a lot of juggling work and school at the same time, raising babies, answering phones, returning emails, and doing homework all at the same time. So it technically worked in the end, but yeah… I mean, if you look at the labyrinth of my life’s journey, it makes no sense at all.

Actually, I never even set out to get into marketing, but I always liked technology a lot. The idea of building websites or doing things digitally with the internet or using computers or things like that, I was always fascinated by that.

And the way I got into it was I was a marketing director at a construction company, and I got laid off. And I thought, “Well, the entire construction industry is totally tanking,” right? This was during the 2008 global recession, and everybody in real estate and construction was just firing everybody left and right.

So I thought, “Hmm… I can go try to get another job at another company, or I can start my own business.” And I started my own business. Well, fast forward a couple of years, I ended up saying, “Ugh, being self-employed is too hard. I’m going to go back and get another job.” So, I did that. I got another job working for someone else. But then I got laid off again. …and again… and so, after losing my job at the third company, I said, “That’s it! I’m never getting laid off again as long as I live! I’m going to be self-employed for the rest of my life until the day I die!”

And so, basically, that’s how I ended up in my current role. And, actually, I’ve done a lot of things in that role. You know, building websites, doing marketing, that sort of thing. But also, what’s cool about it is, like I said, I get to take my business everywhere I go. I have clients here in Tucson, but I have a lot of clients in Colorado, and I get to fly back and forth to visit them sometimes. You know, I work virtually a lot of the time, but, you know, face-to-face is also really important.

So, I guess, yeah, that’s how I ended up doing what I’m doing. It wasn’t really planned (laughs), but it works.

Q: What’s one of the biggest things that you wish you knew before graduating high school? What would you tell your senior high school self?

One of the biggest things I wish I had known as I was graduating high school was that I didn’t need college at all. And unfortunately, I’m from a generation which is — I’m older than I look — people tell me I look young, but I actually have two high school kids myself.

So, when I was getting toward the end of high school, people told me, “You will fail if you don’t go to college. You absolutely cannot get a job without it. You will be completely unemployable. You would be stupid to not go to college. It would be the dumbest mistake of your entire life. And you will be poor forever.”

But I wanted to get married and have kids, so just try to figure out like “Well, how can I support a family if I’m gonna be poor and if no one will ever hire me?” was hard. But that was kind of true: no one would hire me for the jobs that I wanted because the world was absolutely obsessed with college degrees.

Fortunately, I think that’s changing now. Unfortunately, it didn’t change fast enough for me. Like I said, it took me 16 years to finish college, and that was ridiculous, it was expensive, and it was very inefficient.

So what I would say now is, if I had to do it over, the biggest thing I would say to my high school self is, “You don’t have to go to college.”

But the trick is: you still have to become educated! There’s no such thing as somebody who finishes high school — no offense, but — nobody finishes high school and then says, “I have all the knowledge I now need to go take on life!” You don’t. I promise you, you don’t. The world is harsh. High school prepares you a little bit, but not entirely. There’s definitely a lot of education you still need, but the trick is figuring out where you get that from.

In my industry, we can Google things every day. You know how many times I’ve had a client ask me something like, “Hey, Ron, can you do this thing to make my website do this?” And I say, “Yeah, but that’s going to take some complicated coding.” And then, three days later, I’m just Googling stuff, I’m watching YouTube videos, like, “Oh, wow, that’s how I can do it! Cool… great!”

And then I do it, and it looks really impressive. And my client asks, “How did you do that?” and I say “Hey, I’m just… I’m a genius! It’s very complicated code. You wouldn’t understand. Now I’m going to send you a very expensive bill.” And they pay it because I’ve solved a huge problem for them.

So, that’s the thing: becoming educated. Again, in my industry, there are things besides college, like coding boot camps, and even high schools do them now, too. This is such a different generation than what I had growing up.

You can actually do — Google has a program called “CS First” where, as a teenager, you can sign up and they’ll give you a certification and they’ll even fund it and they can even give you a free computer to use and stuff like that. Maybe you’re already doing this here, but there are entry programs, and sometimes there are even direct-to-hire programs where you can get an internship at tech companies, and they will help teach you the skills and then hire you when you’re done, which is an amazing opportunity.

And, again, I didn’t have that opportunity, but I think if I wanted it bad enough, I could have figured out how to get by without college.

Actually, the weird thing is, by the time I finally finished college, I didn’t need it anymore. The only reason I finished is so that I could show my kids that once you start something like that, you should finish it. Plus, I really wanted to graduate from college before my kids did.

I know some people who finished high school — my wife’s uncle, actually, he recently passed away — Then he became a grandpa, and I think, you know, his kids, and maybe even his grandkids, finished high school before he did… but he did. He finally finished high school. It was like that for me, too.

Note: at this point, the panel’s pre-selected questions ended, and the kids in the room got to ask us questions directly.

Q: So, what is it like owning your own business?

Oh, wow. Well, every day is terrifying. I wake up afraid every single morning, saying, “Maybe this is the day I’ll have to go out of business.”

Boy... what’s it like? Yeah, in 60 seconds or less, it’s… let’s say... it’s a rollercoaster of emotion. It’s a thrill, it’s frightening, it’s wonderful. I’m my own boss. I can do whatever I want. I have no agenda, right? I could leave from here, in this room right now, and I could go get in my car and drive to Mexico, and nobody would even know, and no one would care. My wife wouldn’t even care!

Um, well, okay, so, no, she would care... but I would just call her and tell her, “By the way, I’m going to Mexico for a few days.” And she’d be like, “Okay, is there enough money for groceries in our bank account?” because that’s what she cares about.

So, it’s great. It’s hard, but the ability to create your own future and be accountable only to yourself is absolutely awesome.

Q: So, after all that, do you regret going to college now?

[Note: I was really surprised by this excellent question. I hadn’t anticipated it. I had to think for a bit before responding. There was a long pause here.]

Hmm...

No, I don’t regret it... but here’s why: I did not gain skills in college. I only sharpened the skills I already had.

I would not have gotten the skills that help me in my job in college. I just know that. I would never have gotten a computer science degree or anything like that. I would have gotten something really dumb, like philosophy. No offense to anybody here — I love philosophy — but that’s kind of a pointless major if you’re going to be a computer programmer or something like that.

But what I did is, because I went to college after I already got my career started, I found ways to take classes that helped me. So I took things like public speaking, acting, photography, and journalism, and things like that so I could learn to be a better writer, a better photographer, a better speaker, and… I took graphic design and stuff like that.

I guess... I found a way to make it all make sense in the end, so it wasn’t a total waste. So, no, I don’t regret going to college, but... boy... if I had just done it the right way from the very beginning, my life would have been so much easier.

Q: Any final thoughts or words of wisdom you’d share with us?

I think one thing that’s extremely important that I forgot to mention is mentorship. Mentorship is one of the most important things that nobody told me about when I was younger.

People would say like, you know, “Get an education,” or “Take classes and study hard,” or “read lots of books” or things like that. But mentorship was a crucial component that nobody talks about.

There are four mentors I’ve had so far, and the first three drastically changed my life. Because when you sit across the table from a person who’s older and wiser than you, who has been there and seen things, and they’re sitting there looking in your eyeballs for the sole purpose of telling you how you can improve your life — and they’re not charging you and they even don’t want money — that is an unbelievable gift.

And so three times now, I’ve had three men in my life who sat across from me at a table and asked me really complicated questions, where I thought, “Whoa, that’s a wild idea. What if I did do that?” They got me to think in a much, much bigger way than I ever would have on my own.

So, seeking mentorship is huge. And here’s the secret, most people are willing to be a mentor if you just ask them. I’ve had really high-powered CEOs, who are pretty influential people in their communities and they run big expensive companies and I get to sit down with them for free and they say “Yes” to meeting with me. That’s amazing. That’s flattering.

So, not being afraid to ask for mentorship is a really important thing.

But I would recommend you do it in a formal way. Like, you know, through a high school, or a college, or, even the county you live in might have some programs or something like that, right? Like, don’t just walk up to someone and say, “Will you be my mentor?” Um, I suppose you could, but there are better, more formal ways to do that.

Also, when you do have that structure, there’s also accountability where, at the end of a mentoring relationship, you know, usually it’s one year or something like that — at the end of that, you can ask, “How did we do? What did I learn? What did I get out of it?” So, I highly, highly recommend mentorship. It’s life-changing.

I started my first company in 2008, over 15 years ago. During that time, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to start and run a business. Some of those lessons took years for me to fully develop and understand, while others were extremely simple to grasp and became immediately apparent to me but still are worth repeating.

There are a few very small, very simple concepts that have stuck with me over the years, and I often hear myself saying them out loud, like a mantra.

One of those is: “Get to that first dollar as fast as possible.”

When I mentor brand-new freelancers or people creating startups, one of the most common mistakes I see them make is that they spend way too much time thinking and not enough time doing.

The best example of this is when I see someone who’s taken the time to develop a complex business plan, a detailed marketing strategy, a SWOT analysis, and even demographic research and performed all other various and sundry odds and ends to build a hypothetical company that will hopefully make money someday.

I’ll ask them, “Okay, that’s all great... but how are you going to go out and get that very first dollar? Think into the future. Picture depositing that very first check or digital payment from your very first customer. How are you going to do that?”

It’s funny, because a lot of times, people paint their business plans with a big, fat paintbrush where they’re only seeing the big picture of a fully-formed business someday, but completely ignoring what it’s going to take today to go out and start earning money right now.

So when I press them on this, most people get flummoxed and they don’t even know where to start answering the question. They’re so busy thinking ten steps ahead that they haven’t planned out their first step.

Example time! Let’s say Alexis is a graphic designer who just got laid off from her job at a giant corporation and she wants to branch out and start her own graphic design business.

She’s excitedly showing me her new logo, some brochures she made, and a clean, fancy website filled with graphics of design work she did at her big corporate job.

Our conversation might go something like this:

• Alexis: What do you think? Do I have enough case studies? Do my business cards look professional enough? Does my portfolio showcase my skills well?

• Me: Uhh, yeah, sure. Your new brand is strong, and you have done some impressive work in the past that shows off your strengths as a graphic designer. The bigger question is: how are you going to make money?

• Alexis: You mean, what am I going to charge people? I was thinking $____ per hour. Is that a good rate?

• Me: Maybe... That sounds like a good starting point, but you’ll have to see over time what the market is willing to bear. But even if that’s what you will charge, how are you going to make money?

• Alexis: What do you mean? I’ll charge people by the hour for my graphic design work.

• Me: Okay, great. But how are you going to make money? I mean, literally, how? What are you going to do right now, today, to make money? How can you get to that first dollar? Where is it coming from?

• Alexis: Ohh... hmm... I’m not sure yet. That’s a good question.

I’m trying to get her to see that “making money” isn’t just a minor detail in some nebulous dream about how her business will become profitable someday in the future. It’s a simple question about what you’re going to do right here, right now, to go out and find that first customer, sign that first contract, and get to that first dollar as fast as possible.

I like to take them down a list of very literal questions to determine what they should be doing TODAY to make money as soon as possible.

This process includes questions like:

• What is the name of the first company that’s going to hand you that first check?

• Where are they located?

• What is your first customer’s name? Is it a man or a woman?

• Is it someone you already know? Can you call or email that person right now and pitch your services to them?

• If it’s not someone you already know, how will you find them?

• What is the EXACT service you’re going to be billing them for?

• What’s a ballpark range for your first invoice? $50? $100? $1,000?

The idea here is to get them out of their “I’m a business owner” dream phase. This is a dangerous phase that makes some people, frankly, act almost idiotic in how unserious they are. They spend so much time in their heads building the perfect business that they waste days, weeks, months, or longer waiting for the right time to launch the perfect company with the perfect slogan, the perfect elevator pitch, and landing the perfect client... that they waste a lot of their savings (if they have any) or a lot of their severance pay (if they were laid off) thinking and not doing.

The “I’m my own boss” euphoria makes some people forget that in order to be your own boss, you have to boss yourself around and make yourself actually take action, and often, to do things that are hard. Like actually making money, which is hard to do.

So, again, it’s imperative to ask yourself, “How am I going to get to that first dollar?” This question is a good antidote for solopreneurs high on quitting their jobs, becoming their own bosses, and setting their own schedules.

As an example, I’ve been laid off multiple times in my life.

The first time I was laid off, I had seen it coming and had been quietly preparing for many months. So when I found myself unemployed, I knew I no longer had a steady paycheck and had to make money right now. I lost my job on a Thursday, and by Monday, I was talking to potential web design clients and scheduling sales meetings where I could pitch them on redesigning their websites. The result? I had my first full-blown client in less than a week, with a down payment in hand. Bingo.

The second time I was laid off, it was a Wednesday afternoon. I was ready this time. I called up a former client and asked her about a project she’d told me about in the past that she wanted to do “someday.” I asked her, “Hi there, how about we make today ‘someday?’” She agreed, and we got started right away. By the end of business that Friday, I had a check in my hand. Boom. Back in business in less than two days.

Get to that first dollar as fast as possible. Even if it's not doing a perfect job, with the perfect client, with a perfect set of tools.

I guess it’s something I’ve gotten used to in my own life out of sheer necessity, but I’m telling you: it’s crazy the number of times I talk to people who are starting a new business or creating a new product, who haven’t taken the first steps to get to that first dollar. They’re already thinking about rounds of investment or their potential exit strategy, yet they haven’t even sold a single item, signed a single client, or made a single dollar yet.

So, here’s my challenge to you: get to that first dollar as fast as possible, even if it’s not doing a perfect job, with the perfect client, with a perfect set of tools.

Can you do something to get paid? Can you find a friend or family member who needs your skills and who’s willing to pay you this week? Can you go to a networking meeting somewhere in your town tomorrow, pass out a bunch of business cards, and convince one person to hire you for at least one thing?

During a mentoring session a few months ago, I met with a woman who was selling a very specific type of nutritional coaching. She had a lot of questions about her business model, options for pricing and packaging the products she was selling, coaching sessions, and things like that.

I pulled up her website on my laptop and said, “So, I see this button here that says “book now,” but it’s not clickable. Why not?”

“Oh, I haven’t connected it to the payment processor yet,” she replied.

“So you’re telling me that if I were your perfect, ideal customer, and I were looking at this website right now, and I wanted to hire you and pay you money today... I wouldn’t be able to because you just haven’t gotten around to clicking a few buttons?”

“I guess so,” she sheepishly admitted.

“How long has it been like this?” I asked.

“Eight months,” she answered.

“Eight months! What can I do to convince you to fix that this week?” I asked.

“Can you do it today? This afternoon? As soon as you get home? Because none of what we’re talking about here with your business plan matters if people can’t even pay you.”

She agreed that it made sense because even if we hadn’t figured out the physical products that go along with coaching, she could at least sell coaching sessions. And that was half her business model. So why not just launch with half the business model and let people hire you for that and tell them the other parts are “coming soon?” People are used to that. That’s not a problem.

So, again, I’ll say it loudly, obnoxiously, like a mantra because it’s so important: “Get to that first dollar as fast as possible.” The faster you do this, the faster you start making money, the faster you start gaining clients, the faster you can produce products or do creative work that you can bill for you, and it all just... builds from there.

But it will never grow bigger if you don’t start. And it all starts with that first dollar. So go out and get it. Now.

I’m a small business owner who runs a small web design and marketing company that I started over fourteen years ago after getting laid off. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that: I was a marketing director at a construction company and got laid off in 2009 during the height of the real estate recession. Then, I started a web design and marketing company.

But I had never run my own company before, so I had no idea what I was doing. I tried really hard to make ends meet, supporting my wife and four kids and a mortgage. We struggled hard for a year. I got a few clients and was surviving, but it looked like I was going to lose my house, and life had become unpleasant. So, when I got a full-time job offer as a marketing manager for one of my clients (which was a VC-backed software startup), I shocked my wife and friends by immediately taking it.

I figured that working at a larger company that had the financial backing of billionaires—yes, that’s “billionaires” with a “B”—would make it a safe place to land. So after a year of full-time self-employment, I re-entered the workforce and got a bona fide j-o-b as an in-house employee with bosses, team meetings, paydays, a retirement fund, healthcare coverage, and everything. After struggling so much, it seemed like the wise thing to do.

At first, it felt good. It felt secure. I was glad to have a regular paycheck again. But then, just ten months later, without any warning, on a random Tuesday morning, our CTO called an “all hands” meeting and told us they had not gotten the most recent round of funding as expected and would be laying off 35% of the company. Immediately.

Oh no. I thought. This couldn’t be a good thing: I was one of the most recent hires, so I was sure I’d be on the chopping block. And I was right: about an hour later, I was unceremoniously collecting my personal effects from my desk, saying goodbye to the remaining staff, and trying not to cry.

When I walked in the front door at about 1:00 pm during a workday in the middle of the week with all my stuff in a cardboard box, my wife took one look at me and knew exactly what had happened. I didn’t need to tell her. The only question was: “Well, now what?”

I pondered the thought for a few hours, and it all boiled down to one decision: did I want to look for another job again, for the second time in two years, or did I want to go back to being self-employed?

I absolutely dreaded the thought of job seeking and interviewing and enduring the insulting, dehumanizing punishment that the hiring process is. So, I decided to just go back to being self-employed.

It was a good choice. I contacted one of my clients from the year before and said, “Hey, remember that website project you and I talked about doing before, but we never got around to doing it? Want to restart that conversion? ...cause I’m baaaaaack!”

It worked. I met with the client that same day and had a check in my hand before the day was out. It’s been a wild, crazy roller coaster ever since, with lots of zigs and zags and surprising turns, but I won’t bore you with the details. Right now, I’m just here to say that I’m still here, and I’m still in business, even as we approach the year 2023.

So when I’ve been looking at all the news about giant tech companies having massive layoffs, I can’t say I ever worked for Facebook, or Google, or Microsoft, but I can say, “I know how you feel,” at least to a certain extent. While self-employment is not for everybody, if you’ve ever thought about starting your own company, I’d encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity now if you can.

So here’s a list of things I wish I knew when I first started my company after getting laid off from my tech job. And if I could advise my younger self about the road ahead, here are some of the things I would say.

Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Laid Off From My Tech Job

#1: Becoming self-employed means you can never get laid off ever again!

Of all the things I like about being self-employed, my absolute favorite is the fact that being my own boss means nobody can ever lay me off again. It’s an absolute delight to know that no matter what happens, I can never be called into someone’s office to be told, “We’re letting you go.” It’s literally impossible for me to get fired.

Now, that’s not to say that I can’t get fired by a client, or that certain clients may become deadbeats and not pay their bills... but clients are easy to get. Employers are very, very hard to get. You can always replace a client with another client. It’s extremely difficult to replace your full-time employer with another full-time employer.

#2: All you need is ONE paying client in order to get started.

When I first started my company, I had exactly one client: an HVAC contractor. That was all I had. I literally had one client. Their needs were very small, and I finished the project in about two weeks.

Obviously, one client is not enough to keep a business running. But you know what? One client is enough to start a business. Right as I was finishing that first project, I got a phone call out of the blue from someone at a nonprofit organization who said that my client had suggested he reach out to me.

Bingo! Referrals! That was the secret. On and on this went, and one client turned into two, then four, then eight, then ten, and now... far too many to count. But it all started with just one.

#3: If you decide to start your own business, mine your personal network for all it’s worth.

When I got laid off the first time, I had something like 830 contacts in my phone’s address book. My Blackberry Curve (alas, I couldn’t afford an iPhone yet) was filled with the names of people I knew and who knew me. So what did I do? I started contacting them, telling them I had started my own business and was open to work.

Most people didn’t have a need for my services, but they told me they’d keep me in mind if they heard about any opportunities. And because I wasn’t spamming strangers, but reaching out to real-life people I knew and cared about, they actually did keep me in mind. And they started sending me business.

I contacted a real estate agent I knew who didn’t need any help with his website or marketing. But he referred me to a title insurance agent I didn’t know. It turned out he didn’t need help with his website or marketing either, but he referred me to a different real estate agent I didn’t know, who didn’t need help with his website or marketing either. But a while later, he referred me to a custom home builder who absolutely did need help with his website and marketing.

So, looking back on my initial efforts to reach out to my friend in real estate, that was a phone call worth making! It just took a while. So I ended up with an excellent client who loyally paid my bills for several years and ended up paying me tens of thousands of dollars in a very beneficial relationship. But when I first met him, I didn’t know him from Adam. He was literally a friend of a friend of a friend.

There are still people to this day I work with even now that I can trace back to a few choice emails I sent and phone calls I made over a decade ago. That’s amazing.

Do you want an action item for yourself right now? Call and email every single person you know that you think might be able to send business your way or who might know someone who can. Really, make 10, 20, or 50 calls before the week is out. Make a goal to email 100 people by the end of the week. (Note: by that, I mean individual emails, sent one at a time, addressed to each specific person... I don’t mean you should blindly blast out 100 emails at a time to everybody in your address book. Don’t do that).

You might be amazed at how fruitful the ensuing conversations can be.

#4: Diversify your client base as much as possible and quickly.

As I mentioned, everybody I knew when I got laid off the first time was in construction. Because all the people I’d met and interacted with at that job were people who swam in the same circles we did. They were all members of the housing and building association and they all worked as plumbers, electricians, and HVAC companies or other businesses that were still at least tangentially related to homes in some fashion.

What’s wrong with that? Well, when housing recessions (like the real estate recession of 2008) hit, it affects everybody in the industry. Let me tell you: it’s really hard to try to pitch your marketing services to a carpet and flooring company when absolutely nobody is buying houses and, therefore, has no need for carpet and flooring.

These days, I’m fortunate enough to work with a very diverse client base. The clients I run the gamut: plastic surgeons, criminal defense attorneys, nonprofits, city governments, golf clubs, custom glass cutters, and more. Probably the strangest one I’ve worked with recently was a company that makes weather balloons for atmospheric research. None of them are in the same “bucket” as any of the others. And this is good.

Why? Even though most people in the business consulting world seem to be obsessed with telling freelancers to “niche down,” and only to serve an extremely narrow-but-deep slice of the market, I don’t agree with this, and I never have.

When COVID-19 hit, for example, I knew some companies in the web design and marketing world that specialized in serving clients in the restaurant industry. Whoops. Can you imagine working at a company that only serves companies in one specific industry that is completely shut down? I was very, very fortunate that I had no clients in the food service or restaurant industry and therefore wasn’t nearly as affected by the massive impact of COVID.

#5: You now need to learn how to run a business, not just “perform your craft.”

The skills you had at your job are simply not going to cut it in self-employment. You need to learn a lot of business skills now: you cannot get by thinking “I sat in front of my computer cranking out JavaScript for eight hours every day. I can do that now but for myself!”

No. You can’t. There is no possible scenario where that will work.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen (and I’ve seen it many, many times over the years) is how some people think that the skills they had at their last job (and, often, the skills they learned in college) are going to be what will make them money when they’re self-employed.

I’ve been running my own business for many years, and let me tell you: I have never met a person who only does what they did before as a freelancer. To say it more precisely, if you were a “Back End Engineer” who spent all day writing Python at Facebook for 10 hours a day, you’re not going to be doing that if you become self-employed. No, you’re going to be spending the majority of your time creating proposals, sending out invoices, marketing your services, writing contracts, tracking your time, analyzing your profitability, and, sometimes, writing Python.

The biggest skills you’re going to need as a freelancer are not knowing how to upgrade a MySQL database to make it compatible with PHP 8.0. It’s going to be things like sales, customer service, marketing, financials, and project management: and if you have a degree in computer science—especially if you have a degree in computer science—the likelihood that you learned any of those things in college is probably nil.

So get busy. Learn how to drum up business, close a sale, keep good clients, fire bad clients, grow your business, do good work, get paid, and somehow continue to educate yourself so you can stay abreast of all the exciting changes in your industry, in addition to all the other things you have to deal with.

#6: Make sure you work for money—actual, real, cash money—not equity, stock, “exposure,” or any other dirty tricks.

One thing the corporate world has probably taught you is that you can accept a lower compensation than you’d like by accepting equity, ownership in a company, or maybe performance bonuses or commissions. If you go into business for yourself, you need to forget all of that.

When I worked for a tech company, I had the option to buy company stock that “vested” after a certain period of time, blah blah blah. But I never put a single penny of my own money into the company because I didn’t trust the company. I think my distrust was proven entirely valid when I was laid off without notice after less than a year on the job.

Perhaps if you work for Google, Amazon, or Facebook, you don’t have that problem. They’ve proven their ability to give out meaningful stock options and equity in the company that translates into real dollars and cents. That’s fine.

But in the world of self-employment, this does not exist. Really. I cannot tell you the number of times over the past decade and a half I’ve been told by a client, “We don’t have a lot of money... but if you work with us, think of the exposure you’ll get!” Or the number of times I’ve been offered company ownership or a percentage of sales.

Do you know how many times I’ve actually said “yes” to these deals? Only once. I don’t trust almost anybody further than I could kick them, and I’ve been kicked to the curb by more than one employer, so call me extremely cynical, but I don’t do it. I have one client whom I have a commission arrangement with, and that’s only because I’ve known this person for almost 20 years, and I trust him. With everyone else, I say “no.”

When you go into business for the first time, if you don’t have a long, distinguished portfolio, sometimes people will look at you as a potential risk. You’re not proven yet. It was easy for you to take orders from your boss, but can you deliver an entire project on your own? Maybe, or maybe not.

So some people might approach you and promise you a slice of the pie if you work for less than your hourly rate, or if you work for free. Don’t do it. When you’re self-employed, money talks and cash talks loudest.

There are many potential clients who came up with creative arrangements over the years that I chose not to work with because I didn’t trust them, the deal was too complicated, or I wouldn’t have had any recourse if things went south. I’m still in business today; several of those companies are not. I think that’s a good lesson learned, and I didn’t have to learn it the hard way.

#7: Learn when to say “no.” It’s FAR more important than saying “yes.”

“No” is my favorite word in the English language. It’s beautiful. It’s so much better than “yes” for more reasons than I can count right now. Get used to saying “no.” Start practicing it by writing it out and saying it out loud. Go ahead, try it. “No.” Doesn’t that feel good?

When you become self-employed, people are going to ask you to do weird things. They’ll ask if they can pay you after you’ve done the work. Say no.

They’ll ask if you can send the final proof to their 22-year-old daughter, who is going to college and “really has an eye for this kind of thing.” Say no.

They’ll ask if they can pay you when they get paid by their clients. Say no.

On and on I could go... but I’ll leave you with this final thought: new business owners seem to have an overwhelming sense of insecurity and feel like they need to say “yes” to anybody and everybody who asks. If you get weird requests for things you don’t want to do, or if people ask you to do things that are contrary to your business model, just say no.

You’ll regret saying “no” far less often than you’ll regret saying “yes.” I promise. At least, that’s true for me and, so far, every other entrepreneur I’ve ever met.

So, a dear tech worker who recently joined the ranks of the unemployed: I hope you either find another job, as many of you will, or start your own business as I did. It can be rewarding if you’re careful.

Let me know if I can help you at all.

Every time the year comes to a close, I like to review my business practices and see if the things I’m doing still make sense or if I should make changes. For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten to the end of a year and looked at my QuickBooks reports and wondered, “What? I’m still paying $49/month for that? I thought I canceled that months ago.”

Can you relate?

Here is a short list of a few things I always try to focus on at the end of each year—I hope you find some of them helpful. (Also, am I missing anything? Let me know!)

#1: Revisit Your Billing Structure and Rates

When was the last time you raised your prices? Are you still charging the same rates you did two or three years ago? Are you still making a profit? Odds are your expenses have gone up over the past year or two (especially with the insane inflation in 2022).

As New Year’s Day gets close, it’s a really good habit to review your books for the whole year. If you have a bookkeeper, ask him or her to create a P&L (profit and loss) statement, then go through it with a fine-toothed comb and see how your financials are.

Are you actually making money? You may be, or you may not. Only the numbers will tell. Don’t go with your gut on this—look at the reports. One of my business mottos is “data wins arguments,” and this is a perfect example of this.

If you’ve been following along with what I’ve been writing on Free Soloing, you’ll already know that I highly recommend you track all your time, so if you have a year-end report on the hours you’ve booked, you should have that in one hand and your P&L in the other hand. Cross-reference them to see how you’re

#2: Review All Your Business Expenses

How many “free trials” have you signed up for that you’re still paying for? Do you still need the most expensive plan from your internet service provider or phone company? Cell phone companies like Verizon, AT&T, and others are constantly changing their billing structure, and if the plan you signed up for your phone plan a year ago, or longer, you should have an account review.

Look at your bill, and go into the phone store or call them and just ask, “Do I have the best plan?” Many, many times, when I’ve done this, the person I’m talking to will say, “Oh, wow, you have your X plan. We haven’t offered that in a few years. We have a new plan with more data (or more minutes) at a lower cost.”

Here’s the thing: most vendors will not contact you to tell you that you have a bad, old, or outdated plan. It’s up to you to find out. Can you save $20, $40, or $75 by bundling your business phone with your spouse’s phone? Can you cut your internet cost by upgrading to a better plan with more data and faster speeds? Believe it or not, the answer is often “yes.”

I really mean it, though: this is not something you want to rush. Spend 1, 2, or 3 hours analyzing EVERY SINGLE bill you’ve spent money on this year. Do you still need that online subscription? Do you have annual subscriptions to services you needed last year but don’t need anymore?

Go to a coffee shop and do the research. You may find out that spending $6 on coffee will net you hundreds of dollars in savings.

Great example: I am currently paying $160/month for internet at my home office with Cox because that’s the only “hard-wired” ISP in my area. I’m stuck with the outrageously-priced monopoly service, and because they treat their customers so poorly, I have to pay a lot of extra money to get the speed I need. But guess what I found out last month? I can get Verizon Home Internet for $50 a month, and I kid you not: it’s over three times faster.

That means that if I make the switch, I can save over $1,320/year and get better service. But I only know this because I reviewed my bills and started looking into my options.

#3: Make a list of better habits you’d like to develop next year

Aside from recognizing the things you’re doing (or bills you’re paying) that you want to stop, what are some things you want to start? What are some things you know that you should be doing but aren’t doing? Things like:

1. Tracking all your time

2. Reviewing your billables every month

3. Taking better notes in meetings with clients

4. Mailing out handwritten thank-you notes to people

5. Going to networking events with fellow business folks in your area

It’s good to look at the things you’re currently doing and identify the things you want to stop, but it’s also good to look at the other side of the coin. Don’t just beat yourself up about mistakes you’ve made or things you’ve overpaid for... find opportunities for growth and improvement.

#4: Learn some soft skills that are not directly related to your work

I’ve noticed that freelancers are often pretty good at learning technical skills that show a direct relation to the work they do every day. A web developer might say, “I’m going to spend the weekend learning Bootstrap,” for example. This is pretty common. But what’s not as common is for people who work alone to develop soft skills that may only be indirectly related to their work but can still significantly benefit them.

Public Speaking

Man, oh man, public speaking is one of the most commonly-overlooked skills that most people in business should have at least some experience wcommonly overlookedpeople—even super-technical back-end developer types—who normally sit in front of a computer all day, every day, who will be asked to speak on a particular topic at a conference.

That usually creates fear and panic, and they rush to try to figure out how they’re going to survive for 5-8 minutes standing in front of a crowd for the first time in their lives. So there’s a lot of stress involved in that, and what’s worse, their presentations are often... really bad a lot of times. Because even if you’re a subject matter expert who has been working with the same platform or framework for the past 10 or 20 years, getting up in front of hundreds of people and speaking convincingly on the topic is a completely different skill set.

So why not anticipate that this is going to happen to you at some point in your life, and get some public speaking skills now? I highly recommend it. Good news: there’s almost assuredly a Toastmasters International club somewhere in your area that you can join. I was a member of Toastmasters for about four years, and it’s one of the best things I ever did.

Sales Training

This is another one. Again, a lot of freelancers are good at their “craft,” but really bad at sales (or at least not very good). But sales is a monumentally important skill for people who are self-employed, whether they think of themselves as “salesmen” or not. There are all kinds of ways to learn how to sell better, and it’s a highly valuable skill that will actually make you money. Learn to do it better!

Meeting Minutes

Effectively writing down what happened at a meeting is another skill that is actually highly developed in the corporate world, but most freelancers I know don’t ever pay attention to it. How good are you at taking notes when you meet with a client? Have you ever looked into this? Did you know it’s an actual skill and there are best practices for how to do it? Many people don’t know this, and a lot of people are awful at taking notes. Can you spend a few hours upskilling on this highly-relevant indirect skill? Yes, you can and should.

#5: Make a list of your best and worst clients

I do this every year, and it’s one of the best things I do. It’s very easy: just open QuickBooks or whatever program you use to track clients and projects and rank them by the amount they’ve paid you this year. Bingo.

Okay, it’s not exactly that simple: you can’t only take into consideration how much a client pays you. Ask a few other questions about each one of your clients, such as:

• Do they respect me?

• Do they respect my time?

• Do I actually enjoy working with them, and do they enjoy working with me?

• Are they rude, nagging, annoying, or constantly asking me to drop everything and respond to their sense of urgency?

• Do they actually pay on time? Have you ever had payment issues with them?

• Are they easy to get in touch with?

I had a project I was working on earlier this year with a monthly marketing contract, but the client was never available. Any time I’d call, he wouldn’t answer, all my emails were ignored, and he was never available for meetings. It was kind of awkward: I had a valid, signed contract with a real, live client who was paying me real money, but it was such a bad fit that I just stopped working for him and stopped billing him. I don’t even know if he noticed, honestly, and I don’t really care.

I’m not mad at him, but it’s clear to me that he doesn’t need marketing help right now, and I’m not going to chase him down and force him to answer my calls, reply to my emails, and attend regularly scheduled meetings. So I’m happy to pick things up where we left off if and when he’s ready to go again, but in the meantime, I just hit the “pause button” because he’s a bad client, at least right now. I have other, better clients to focus on who can have the time to work with me.

So, all that to say, “bad clients” aren’t necessarily the ones who pay the most; it’s a package deal.

Hopefully, you find some of these helpful. Is there anything you do on a regular basis at the end of each year?

A few months ago, I got an email from a family member who asked me “If I wanted to quit my own job and start my own business, where would I start? What are the steps I would need to take?”

I was delighted to hear such a profoundly simple question since it’s always good to review the basics and also because most people act first and ask questions later. In other words, they make rash decisions like quitting their jobs first and then figuring out what it would take for them to start a business.

I thought about his question for a while, then wrote out a list of the steps he should take in order to set up a legal business as quickly as possible and sent it to him via email. I’ve decided to slightly modify that list and share it here because other people who are also considering starting their own business might find it helpful. (Note: this is only for people in the USA. In other countries, the details may vary, but the basics are probably similar).

Here is a very simple list of steps to take if you want to start your own business.

Disclaimer: none of this is legal or financial advice. I highly recommend you speak with a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) or attorney if you can.

Step #1: Choose Your Company’s Name

If you can, pick a really strong name that is specific enough that it tells people what you do, but is broad enough that you don’t paint yourself into a corner.

For example: “Apple, Inc.” is extremely broad and only works today because basically everybody on earth has heard of Apple and knows what they do. But when Apple was first started, it was originally called “Apple Computer, Inc.,” and that was a good choice. It tells you who they are and what they do.

But if they had just called the company “Apple” (which is a word for a fruit, which has literally nothing to do with computers), this would not have been a good idea starting out.

But you don’t want to be too specific, either. If you’re starting a website development company, “Nevada PHP Developers” is extremely specific. That might make sense if you’re located in Nevada, and if you only offer PHP development.

But if you wanted to branch out into another state, or if you wanted to offer more than just PHP, that’s not a very good name and would confuse people.

Step #2: File the Paperwork to Form a Legal Entity

Find the website for your Secretary of State and figure out how to create a legal entity. In almost every circumstance, freelancers and solopreneurs should create an LLC (Limited Liability Company). Do not work as a sole proprietor—there are legal and financial ramifications for this. (Ask an attorney or CPA if you really want to know why this is a bad idea).

In Arizona, where I live, creating a single-member LLC costs $50. It’s just that simple. Other states charge different amounts, and some states are extremely expensive and require huge annual fees (like California, which charges $800 every year), so read the regulations carefully and know what your state requires.

When you fill out the application, make sure you cross all the t’s and dot all the lower-case j’s perfectly since they’ll charge you to fix it or make changes. For example, if your company is “Smith Graphic Design,” and you’re forming an LLC, make sure you spell it out all the way as “Smith Graphic Design, LLC.”

I made a mistake years ago when I started my first company: I forgot to put the acronym “LLC” in the company name. An attorney told me that wasn’t good enough, so I had to re-file and pay the same initial fee all over again to fix it — just to add those three dumb letters to the end of the company name!

Don’t make the same mistake I did. It was a waste of time and money.

Step #3: Get an EIN From the IRS

Once you have your official LLC paperwork (called “Articles of Organization”), go to the IRS website and apply for an EIN (employer identification number).

Having an EIN helps create a wall of separation between yourself and your company. It can protect you in a few ways: one big way is that you can give your clients a W9 with your EIN for tax purposes instead of having to share your actual social security number, which is a big opportunity for fraud or identity theft.

Step #4: Open a New Business Bank Account

Now, take your limited liability company’s articles of organization and your IRS employer identification number and go to a bank (or, even better, a credit union). Open a business checking and savings account, and ask for a checkbook and a company debit card.

Do everything you can to keep all your business purchases and deposits completely separate from your personal finances. In other words, make sure you don’t deposit business checks into your personal account, or pay for personal expenses with your business account. Draw a line between the two and be very careful not to cross it.

If you do mix your personal and business finances, you can get into a lot of hot water for something called “commingling funds” which is illegal. So just don’t do it: make sure business transactions are strictly business, and keep personal transactions out of your business.

Also, keep all your receipts and track every dollar you spend and earn. You can start out extremely simply, by using Google Docs for generating invoices, and using Google Sheets for tracking your finances to start. Eventually, your company will grow into needing something more powerful like QuickBooks to truly give you a picture of your business finances but this is fine to start.

At some point, you’ll want to hire a bookkeeper, but for now, at least in the beginning, track all that stuff yourself. You’ll want to get good at understanding how money works and you have to become very familiar with how much you’re spending, and how much revenue you’re taking in.

Step #5: Get a Website Domain

Even if you never have a website, you’ll want to get a domain name. This is important because you’ll want to use that domain for your email.

For example: “sean@theweldingking.com” or something like that is a really strong, professional email if your name is Sean and you are the king of welding.

On the other hand, “slcwelder_188@hotmail.com” is just lame. Don’t do that. You want people to be able to know who you are and what you do just by looking at your email address.

Find a domain that’s available, that ideally ends“in a ”.com," you're forming a for-profit business. The domain registrar I currently use most often is NameCheap, but you can also use GoDaddy, Google Domains, etc.

Step #6: Pick a Solid Business Model

The MOST important decision you have to make is figuring out exactly what your business will do and won’t do.

Are you going to create things to sell, or will you be providing a service? In other words, will people buy products you make, or will they pay you for your time and skills?

Map out everything on paper and rehash it a few times, answering questions like:

• What am I willing / not willing to do?

• Where am I willing / not willing to go?

• How much will I charge people for my products or services?

• What does my ideal client look like?

• Where will I find my ideal client?

• Do I have everything I need to get started?

• Am I lacking in equipment or skills? If so, how can I fix this?

The more specific you can be with all of these, the better won’t be married to your answers, and you can tweak them over time if needed, but the more decisive you can be in the beginning, the better your chances are at putting your,r best foot forward without having to waste time or money making a pivot in the future.

Note: If you end up selling products, it's highly likely you’ll need a sales tax license. Contact your state, county, and city to learn more about that.

Step #7: Get Serious About Money

Finally, here’s the number one most urgent task you have: finding out exactly what you need to do in order to get one paying client or one product sold.

How quickly can you get that first dollar? Will it take you three months until you can actually get paid? Or can you find a way to get at least some cash in your pocket by the end of this week?

If you can, figure out the fastest way to deposit that very first check, then work backward, thinking about all the steps needed to do that. Then go do them.

Once you get one client or one sale, do the same thing again, and again, and again, and then 15 years you'll look back and wonder: "How did I get here, with this business and all these clients and all this wonderful, consistent income?"

You’ll realize the secret was just starting with one client and then repeating the process.

Or at least that's how it worked for me.

I hope that helps for a start. Let me know how I can help.

One of the biggest mistakes I see freelancers make is not tracking their time. I don’t mean if they’re working hourly: most freelancers are exceptionally good and ethical about tracking their time when they work on a project, and they bill by the hour.

No, I’m talking about all the other work you do that isn’t necessarily billed hourly to the client but should be “billed hourly” to your own company in order to track the profitability of a job, whether the client cares or knows how much time you’ve put toward it or not.

These days, after nearly 15 years as a business owner, I rarely work on an hourly basis for my clients. I learned early on that hourly rates are not a good way to build a profitable business. In theory, yes, it makes sense. Hypothetically, If I tell a client I’ll bill them $100/hour (for example) and I work for 10 hours, I’m going to send them a bill for $1,000 when it’s all said and done. That’s all fair, doesn’t it? So I carefully track the time I put toward their project, then bill them when I hit 10 hours. Right?

Well, kind of. It makes sense on hourly work, but billing for hourly work is a bad model. For a few reasons (that I’ll explain more in the future). But let’s just say that, hypothetically, I’m not working on a project I bill by the hour, but on a project-fee. That’s the “firm-fixed-price” model that I almost always work with, probably 90% of the time these days.

At the end of the day (or at the end of the month, as is more likely), if the client is paying a firm, fixed price for their project, they will not care at all how much time I put toward their project. If my contract with the client is $1,000, they don’t care whatsoever whether I put in 10 hours or 100 hours. What is it to them? All they care about is that they contracted with you (or with me, in this case) to provide a finished product for a fixed price that cannot change.

In the scenario above, if I work for 10 hours when I bill the client $1,000, I’ve made $100/hour (gross). But in that same scenario, if I bid the job wrong or underestimated the time needed to deliver it and end up spending 100 hours on it, I’ve made $10/hour (gross). That’s an extreme example, but it isn’t by much.

I remember that, in the early days of my web design company, I was still trying to figure out how to bill for my time and make a profit. I always felt like I was trying to split the atom by somehow cracking a magic code to make my company profitable. It was a constant worry for me. But then, I met a fellow web designer who was struggling with the same thing but struggling far more than I even knew.

We had a mutual acquantance, and I had always been wary of taking on this client because of some weird quirks I saw in their business model, and I never felt like I would have been valued in the work I provided. As it turned out, my friend ended up working with that client and built a website for their company. The whole process was ridiculously complicated, and drawn out, and it turned out the client was a “client from hell.”

When the website was finally launched, I asked my friend how long he had spent on it. “Oh, at least 60 hours.” Oof, I thought. That’s a lot of time on a pretty simple website. Then I asked the next question, “Wow, what did you charge them for it?” His answer almost knocked my pants off.

“I ended up charging them $500 because I just wanted it to be done so I could move on with my life.”

What?!! That’s absolutely insane! That meant that my friend, a highly intelligent man with a bachelor’s degree in computer science... with two decades of experience had beat his brains out for a client that didn’t even care, for $8.33/hour! That was barely minimum wage!

That’s totally insane on every possible level! He might as well had gotten a job at McDonalds flipping hamburgers! (No offense to McDonald’s workers: there’s no shame in a job like that).

This is a problem I’ve seen over and over again: where freelancers take on projects they’re bad at bidding, and they don’t really stop to think about how to do it better in the future.

This post is not necessarily about how to make better proposals, although that’s a worthy topic. My point right now is: you should track your time on all projects whether you bill hourly or not, so you can look back and do a proper job costing analyses and decide which jobs were and weren’t worth doing after the fact.

Since 2010, I have tracked my time obsessively. For the first two years, I made the mistake being super-relaxed about tracking my own time, but after two years, I got really serious about it. Because of that, this means I have got twelve years worth of historical data on what I’ve spent my time on every single working day.

That’s amazingly helpful information when it comes time to do a year-end review (which I try to do each year) and determine whether my company is on the right path or not.

Each year, I try to ask myself the following questions:

• Who are my best clients in terms of profitability?

• Who are my worst clients in terms of profitability?

• What changes should I make to my business model based on all my booked time this year?

• What changes should I make to my pricing model based on all my booked time this year?

• Which clients or which projects are time wasters?

• Which project did I work on where I made the highest hourly rate? What about the lowest hourly rate? What do I think about that?

• Should I raise my rates?

• Should I work more billable hours or fewer?

• Am I going to be better off this year than last year?

Almost none of these questions can be answered definitively unless you are actually tracking your time. I don’t think I can overstate how important this is. When I email Virginia, my bookkeeper, at the end of the year, I ask her questions like, “How am I doing? Should I get more or better clients? Should I fire some bad clients? If so, who?” - She’s not going to be able to answer any of these questions without the accompanying data that first answers the underlying questions: “How much money did you make, and how much time did you spend?”

Over the past dozen years, I’ve worked on projects where I bid them so poorly I netted about $45/hour, and some projects I bid so spectacularly that I made of $380/hour. How do I know? Because I track it all. (After all, “track everything” is one of my mottos.")

So what’s my point? What do I want you to learn and take away from this post right now? Easy. If you’re a freelancer, do the following ASAP:

1. Track every hour you work, ideally, whether you’re billing for it or not but at least for all the time you’re working on a specific project.

2. At the end of each year, have a bookkeeper or CPA help you review your revenue and cross-reference it with your time-tracking system to find out how profitable each client or project is. After all, if you make $50,000 on one client, that’s a lot of revenue. But if you spend 1,000 hours on their project, you’ve only netted $50/hour.

3. If you have great clients, send them a thank-you note or a gift like a Christmas turkey. (Seriously: I’ve done this before—I’ve given people an engraved iPod Shuffle as a thank-you).

4. If you have bad clients, fire them! This is not a joke. I’m serious: do it. Find a way to tell them you can’t work with them anymore, and put space between you and them as quickly as you can. If they’re not good clients, move on.

5. Learn from the data! Track everything and use it to help you make better decisions. That client you thought was so great to work with; if it turns out they’re your worst client because you bill them the smallest amount, but they waste the most time, it’s time to say goodbye! As I’ve said many times over the years, every hour you spend working for a bad client is an hour wasted that you could have put toward working with a better client.

Please, I’m begging you: if you’re not tracking your time, do so right now. It’s almost the end of the year... make it your New Year’s resolution. If you have any way to analyze the time you’ve spent this year, take an hour or three and do this exercise on a Saturday to see what you can come up with. The results can be life-changing. This is no exaggeration.

About a month ago, I wrote out all my clients on the big whiteboard in my office. I rated them all based on the following criteria:

1. How much do I make each month per client in MRR (monthly recurring revenue)?

2. How annoying are they as a client? (This sounds cruel, but it isn’t. It’s a fair question: do they respect me and my time?)

3. How good are they at paying on time?

The results of this exercise shocked me. I learned that the top three clients I had were not exactly the top three I would have expected. I also learned that the bottom three clients I have are awful clients. They don’t value my time, don’t give me what I need, and pay late on a regular basis.

So what did I do? Well, to be honest, there is nothing yet. But I will in the next few weeks. But that is only thanks to my good habit of tracking all my time.

If you don’t have a time-tracking system already, get one! I don’t care: use a paper sheet, or an Excel spreadsheet, or whatever works for you. The tool I have used for the past 12 years is called Toggl Track, and I must say, a dozen years in, I really like it. Check it out: no, I don’t even have an affiliate link. I just like the product. I’ve also tried Harvest, Freshbooks, and Noko Time. I’m sure they’re fine, but I’ve used Toggl for pretty much forever, so I’m not going to change it unless they do something obnoxious that makes me cancel.

Please start tracking all your time right now. It’s one of those you can do that will take you an extra 12 minutes every day but potentially help you make $15,000 more next year.

Do it now. That is all.

To me, one of the most annoying things about working alone, working remotely, and being a “digital nomad” is how people idolize it like it’s the most wonderful lifestyle business. It’s not. Please, stop pretending it is.

Seriously, there are scads of videos on YouTube trying to lure poor saps into the big lie of “grab a laptop, book a one-way ticket to a tropical island paradise, and live your best life working as a digital nomad.”

Please, for everyone’s sake, stop it with this madness! The whole premise is 95% garbage. For most of the past two and a half decades, I’ve been able to work entirely remotely. That means I have no dedicated office and can essentially take my work with me wherever I go since I don’t have any sort of headquarters or home base.

Working remotely definitely can be cool...

This ability to “work from anywhere” is something I appreciate the most. But over the years, I’ve seen a ridiculous amount of romanticizing of this lifestyle, and it’s really getting old.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t appreciate that I can work just about anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection and my laptop, no matter the location, environment, or time zone. For the past decade, especially, I have spent many days or even weeks working from various coffee shops, co-working spaces, and hotel rooms all over the USA where my clients have absolutely no idea where I am, or even that I’m gone.

I currently live in Arizona where it’s relatively warm all year long. That’s why I moved here. But before that, I lived in Colorado for 20 years, and for at least the past decade, my ability to work anywhere was a huge blessing.

More than once, I saw on the news that a massive snowstorm was coming in a day or two, and I bought a plane ticket to Florida as fast as I could, then flew out there and weathered the storm in sunny paradise while my friends back home were shoveling snow, scraping windshields, and rubbing their frozen hands together to stay warm.

My ability to do this while still remaining self-employed is my superpower. Nobody in my dad’s generation had the ability to do this. They just didn’t. The mere thought of something like this would have seemed outrageous. But because I can do my work with nothing but a computer and the Internet, it does not matter where I work.

I love that.

That is, absolutely, positively, one of my favorite things about being self-employed. Not only can I go just about anywhere I want, whenever I want, and keep working... I don’t even have to ask permission since I’m self-employed and don’t have a boss, or a human resources department, or bureaucratic red tape and paperwork to fill out.

I just go. Whenever I want. Wherever I want.

That is glorious.

But it’s not as amazing as it sounds.

Over and over, on YouTube, Medium, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social networks, I see a constant stream of people who idolize a lifestyle that is 100% movable and 100% remote 100% of the time.

But let me tell you... that sucks. Nobody actually wants to live completely remotely, logging into random wireless access points at coffee shops in the far reaches of the world forever. It’s fun for a while, but it’s not a lifestyle.

Please stop promoting this.

I’m a married man with five kids and a wife. I could not possibly be a 100% digital nomad even if I wanted to. But because the restrictions on my career are so few, I could come very close if I really wanted to, and while there are times I’m sitting on the beach collecting seashells during business hours on a random Tuesday afternoon, let me tell you: it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve worked all over the place, including Texas, Pennsylvania, California, South Dakota, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Oklahoma, Florida, and Yosemite National Park.

Do I like being able to hop on an airplane with no warning and disappear, and not have to take time off work in order to do it? Yes, absolutely. Is it great that nobody knows I’m even gone and doesn’t even think to ask? Yes, for sure.

But is it luxurious? By no means.

Please keep the following in mind:

• Working remotely is still work.

• Working remotely is less than ideal.

• Working remotely often involves complications such as poor cell phone reception, spotty Wi-Fi, slow connections, and frequent interruptions.

When you’re sitting at home or at a dedicated office, you can often sit down for 5, 10, or even 15 hours and get a lot of work done. But when you’re sitting in the airport in Denver, like I was a few weeks ago, during a layover, you can get work done at the airport bar. But it’s a constant stream of activity that can look like a comedy of errors:

• find a place with a Wi-Fi connection

• get connected to Wi-Fi

• realize you don’t have a sufficient charge on your laptop and need to plug your laptop into a power outlet, but realize there aren’t any near you

• relocate to a seat that has a place to plug in

• start working

• realize you don’t have enough money in your personal checking account to pay for your tab

• whip out your phone and open your banking app, then deposit a check to pay yourself

• make sure you’re staying on top of the status of your flight so you don’t miss it

• try to work like a maniac while casually sipping a beer and making sure you eat something since you don’t know the next time you’re going to have a chance to get a solid meal

• check the phone messages that have piled up when you were on the road or on the plane and decide which ones need a response

• put on some noise-canceling headphones and try to get some work done

• get a notification from your iPhone app that your flight is now boarding

• close your laptop and start packing up so you can head to your gate before your flight leaves

• realize that you are not going to be able to get any work done, since you’ll be on a plane without Wi-Fi for the next four hours, and it will be midnight when you arrive at your destination, and you’re so tired from walking, driving, shuttling, and flying, and you’re so jet-lagged that you finally give up and put everything away and just try to sleep on the flight or just watch a movie because your brain is fried

So far, my experience working on the road has only been in the USA. Some people might look at where I’ve been and say something like, “Yeah, but you haven’t even left your own country. It’s more worthwhile if you go somewhere ‘exotic’ like somewhere in another country.” But I totally disagree: that only adds to the misery. Because then, on top of that, you’d be adding all kinds of new variables, such as:

• tropical diseases or issues with food poisoning or unfiltered water

• immigration/visa issues

• problems with exchange rates

• potentially missing flights that are much harder to make up for

• language barriers

• etc.

When I was a part-time opera singer, I spoke to a soloist who had made a full-time career out of singing opera professionally for multiple decades. I asked him what a life like that entailed. I thought it sounded kind of fun and glamorous, as he traveled all over the world doing his art. But his response actually surprised me.

"No, way, man... this life gets old really fast. No matter what country you're in, every hotel room looks exactly the same on the inside. And after a week or two, living out of a suitcase absolutely sucks and you just want to go home."

That was an excellent point, I thought.

See what I mean? Being a “digital nomad” is quite similar to that.

In theory, it sounds incredible. It’s something that people from my dad’s and my grandpa’s generation couldn’t have even considered.

But in real life, it kind of sucks. You’re living out of rolling luggage filled with dirty laundry, constantly chasing flights, constantly negotiating the bizarre phenomenon of changing time zones which will often screw up your phone calls and scheduled meetings no matter how prepared you think you are, and you’re always battling the twin beasts of finding a solid Wi-Fi connection and finding a place to plug in and charge your gear.

I’ve been a “digital semi-nomad” for a decade and a half. Sometimes, it’s incredible and life-giving. Sometimes, it’s really hard. And sometimes, it straight-up sucks. Please, let’s all stop pretending it doesn’t.

I’ve been working in internet marketing for a decade and a half. During that time, I think I’ve heard it all when it comes to people asking the question: “How can I make money online?” So many times, across social media, online forums, and even among people I know and meet in person, I’ve heard people ask some variation of: “How can I find a way to make money online/on the internet/working from home?”

This has always been extremely annoying to me. Not so much because the question itself is so bad… because it isn’t.

Technically, “How can I make money working from home?” is a perfectly fair question. But people are almost never just asking that question. In my observation, most of the time, people are actually wondering: “How can I make money from home with no skills, with no equipment, with no investment, and with as little effort as possible?” That is an entirely different question.

So here’s my honest answer to that: you can’t. Please stop trying. Stop even thinking that it’s possible.

The only people who make money working from home in their underwear with as little work as possible are people selling online courses with titles like “How to Make Money Working From Home in Your Underwear With as Little Work as Possible.” That’s it. Those people are freakin’ rich because there’s an endless supply of people willing to shell out $49.99, $79.99, or $259.99 for an online course that has vague promises of a more prosperous future for you—yes, you—in just seven easy lessons.

There are SO many business books on topics like this; it’s truly bizarre. I think much of the current craze was fueled by that horrible book The Four-Hour Workweek that came out in 2007. I’m not just being hateful: I’ve read the book. Twice. It had some good ideas about automation, prioritizing your efforts, maximizing your productivity, and finding other people to do the small, tedious, repeatable tasks that suck up your time but don’t really require you to do them.

But just looking at the book’s subtitle gives away its ridiculous premise: “Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.”

Ugh.

It’s almost sickening how clearly it’s pandering to the audience that is thinking, hoping—praying—they can just find a way to click a few buttons on a computer, set up an online storefront to sell diet pills that don’t work, staffed by underpaid laborers from the Phillippines, with drop-shipping from a fulfillment center they’ve never even seen, somewhere in another state they’ve never even been to.

Really, who wouldn’t want to do that? Who wouldn’t want to just lean back on a beach chair in St. Croix, sipping on boat drinks and watching as thousands of dollars just slide effortlessly into their bank accounts? That sounds amazing. That sounds sexy.

But guess what? I’ve never met a single person in my life who has actually done this.

I HAVE met a few people who can lean back on a beach chair in St. Croix, sipping on boat drinks, watching as thousands of dollars just slide into their bank accounts. But none of it was effortless; it took years of hard, sometimes miserable, and oftentimes very lonely work.

W-O-R-K.

One problem is that authors of books about “joining the ‘new rich’” can pitch their system/product/course/book/class by showing off the life they live now and say, “See? Look at how I live! Don’t you want to be like me?” It’s easy to get sucked into thinking, “Wow, yeah, it must be that simple. All I have to do is pay him and do what he tells me; then I’ll be rich like him.”

To quote the Canadians, “Sorry, no.” It doesn’t work that way. You can’t shortcut the process.

So, how does one make $10,000 a day working from home? I’ll give you the answer right here, right now.

Here’s the answer: good, old-fashioned, hard work. Period.

Just to prove I’m not just being a jerk, I’ll fulfill the promise I made in the title of this article and tell you about “how I make $10,000 per day working from home.” Here’s the secret I used that you can replicate for yourself:

1. Find a need

2. Fill it

3. Charge a good price for it

4. Take good care of your clients

5. Ask them for referrals

6. Rinse; repeat

On a basic level, that’s it. Seriously. It’s just that simple. Notice: I’m not saying that it’s easy. Easy and simple are very different.

By the way, this is true across just about any industry. In my case, I spent many years learning web design, web development, and digital marketing. That meant many long, painful, boring, lonely nights doing research online, teaching myself skills, and asking people I knew, “How do I do this?” It meant a lot of lost sleep, a lot of mistakes, a lot of trial and error, and, above all, a lot of confusion, frustration, and misery. And eventually, I figured out how to make it work.

It is true: sometimes, I do make $10,000 per day working from home. But it is also true that sometimes, I make $0 per day working from home. Heck, I’ve sometimes gone a week, ten days, or even two weeks without making a single dollar. That’s all part of the package: ask any freelancer or solopreneur.

Or ask any company founder, honestly. If they were still alive, you could ask the founders of Safeway, Shell, Google, Wal-Mart, Volkswagen, or Apple. No matter how successful they are today, at one point, they were just an idea, with a few people putting in the hard work of (as I mentioned) finding a need, filling it, charging a good price for it, taking good care of their clients, asking them for referrals, rinsing and repeating. None of it comes with any guarantees for you and me now nor for those founders back then.

So… that’s how you make $10, or $100, or $10,000 a day, working from home or working from anywhere else for that matter. Just do the work. Stop trying to shortcut the process.

Most of all, PLEASE—for Pete’s Sake—stop buying eBooks, listening to podcasts, or clicking on articles with titles like “How I Make $10,000 Per Day Working From Home.”

(If you’d prefer, watch a video version of this article.)

One of the most difficult parts of working alone as a solopreneur is dealing with the daily struggle of depression. I sometimes call depression “a monster” because, like a monster, it’s scary, it’s dangerous, it’s really good at lurking in the shadows, hiding, and a lot of people like to tell themselves it doesn’t exist, but they’re still secretly afraid that it might.

I have been working either remotely or completely alone, off and on, since 2006. In those 16 years, I’ve heard a lot of influencers and industry professionals talk about “staying inspired” or “keeping your skills sharp” and the value of continuing education. But I have almost never heard people give presentations on “how to deal with depression” when you’re self-employed or work from home.

Why don’t people talk about this? Why do people pretend it doesn’t exist? Since the COVID pandemic, I’ve read articles and heard news stories about how people are suffering from “remote work burnout” or “Zoom fatigue” from being isolated at home and having to sit through so many virtual meetings… but I still rarely hear or see anything about actual, real depression as a daily battle that some people have to struggle through.

So let me state clearly right here and now: depression is real, depression hurts, and it’s easy to ignore and pretend it doesn’t exist or pretend that you don’t have it. And, as I learned when a friend of mine committed suicide in 2018, I’ll say this too: depression kills.

…depression is real, depression hurts, and it’s easy to ignore and pretend it doesn’t exist or pretend that you don’t have it

It’s not just a matter of having a bad attitude or feeling sad: depression is like a dark raincloud of misery that hovers over you every day, making it hard for you to get out of bed in the morning; remember why you chose the work you do in the first place, or feel good about yourself and the work you do.

I don’t know whether depression is caused by working alone and feeling lonely or not, but I do know that they’re correlated. Working by yourself, all day, every day, can be absolutely depressing. It can make you feel like you’re lost out at sea on a tiny little boat that no one is ever going to find: no one will ever rescue you, and you’ll always be isolated and alone.

Depression is not a joke, and it’s not something to laugh off. And if you struggle with depression, it’s not something that you can just “deal with” or “get over.”

Let me state here: I’m not a doctor, a therapist, or a counselor. But I am intimately familiar with the monster of depression; I’ve read a lot about it, and I have personally spoken to professionals about it. And over the years I’ve spent working alone, I’ve found some ways to keep that monster at bay.

Here are a few things you may find helpful if you find yourself alone, working from home, and wondering how you can rise above the misery.

#1: Get Out Of The House and Meet People You Know.

As much as your schedule allows, get out of your house and go meet with people you know (and who know you). When I was in one of the most depressing seasons of my life, one of my friends came up with a great idea: a lunch group. He invited a few different men out to lunch every Wednesday, and each time, they visited a different place. If my schedule allowed, I was welcome to come. If I couldn’t make it, I didn’t have to. Genius.

Calling something so simple a genius idea might sound ridiculous, but man, I’m telling you: it was. I had an opportunity at least once per week to meet with people who knew and cared about me, and because someone else had scheduled it, I didn’t even have to do the work to make it happen. Plus, introverts like myself are deathly afraid of calling people and asking them to come to something in person, and I didn’t have to do that. I could just go or not go.

It was very helpful and healing to know that I was always welcome to join these guys at lunch. And if I couldn’t make it, sometimes people would call me or email me and check in to make sure I was doing all right. I cannot overstate how helpful having a simple standing lunch meeting with friends was for me.

#2: Get Out Of The House and Meet People You DON’T Know.

Another thing I did when I was extremely lonely and low was go to Meetups. This was a good way to meet people who worked in my industry that I didn’t already know, which was nice. It helped me see that there were people like me who do the same kind of work I do and that I have things in common with. It also helped me professionally: I could learn more about industry trends, hear the latest news, and see examples of work done by people who are better than me, which is inspiring.

But it wasn’t just industry-specific Meetups that were directly related to my work either. I went to some other Meetups that had nothing to do with work: a German Language Learners Meetup, a Wine Appreciation Meetup, and more. All of these helped accomplish the same thing: meeting new people and learning new skills. This also gave me the added bonus of something different to focus on that’s above and beyond my current circumstance and emotional state. It’s hard to feel mopey and think, “Woe is me,” when you’ve got homework or assigned reading in another language.

#3: Ask your family how you’re doing.

This is really embarrassing to do, but it’s very important. There is nobody in my life who knows me as well as my wife. And she is the one who knows (before I do) whether I’m thriving or struggling. So sometimes, I’ll check in with her and ask, “How am I doing?” Or, alternately, she’ll check in with me and ask, “How are you doing?” And I have to just be honest and tell her the truth. “I’m bored… I’m lonely… I’m struggling… I’m feeling (insert whatever the answer is here).”

If you live with your family, there’s no one better qualified to help assist you through this struggle than those family members because they love you. They care about you. And if you’re working from home, they see you more than anyone else. As I mentioned, it’s embarrassing (especially for men, I think), but it’s so important to listen to them and rely on their advice and counsel, whether you like it or not.

If they say something like: “You should go get help,” — listen to that. There are mental health professionals out there, like therapists and counselors, and your family is not suited to take on that role, but they are perfectly suited to letting you know when you need to see someone like that.

#4: Pets: If you don’t have one, get one! If you have one, get another one!

One simple way to keep your spirits up is to get a pet! Pets are fantastic: they’re fun, they make your life interesting, they need your help in order to survive, they’re (usually) a welcome diversion, and, depending on the pet, they may even be happy to see you. Many pets need a little bit of care and feeding, but not too much. Most only add a marginal amount to your grocery bill, and I think it’s worth the extra cost.

When I was in my most depressed state, I was working from home and living in a rental house that didn’t allow cats or dogs, so I bought a baby Russian Tortoise. I named him Stravinsky. He was such a fun addition to our family: he was fun to bathe, feed, and take on walks. During my lunch breaks, I’d wrap a long string of red yarn around one of his legs, take him out into my backyard, and let him chow down on dandelions. That was a calming distraction, and it got me outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

A while later, during the COVID pandemic, my kids were going crazy being stuck at home, and their craziness was driving me crazy too. They weren’t as fond of Stravinsky as I was, and they wanted their own pet. So, I went to the local animal shelter, and we adopted a cat. Bingo! That solved so many problems, both for the kids and for me. We now have a furry friend who will drop whatever he’s doing and come running if it’s snack time or if we want to pet him.

If you don’t already have a pet, get one: you might be amazed at how much taking care of a small living creature puts some joy into your life.

#5: Find a “third place” that isn’t your house and isn’t your office.

Many years ago, I heard someone describe this concept of a “third place” — it’s a place that isn’t your home and isn’t your office. It’s a separate place where you can have your own personal time, or you can have business time and get some work done.

A third place can be anywhere: a Starbucks by your house, an Einstein Brothers’ Bagels, a public library, a coworking space, a brewery, or anything else that works for you. I have done all the above and have benefited from all of them. Ideally, a place like this would have WiFi, but not necessarily. It can be indoors or outdoors, and it could require a membership fee or be completely free. It doesn’t really matter: what matters is that it’s a place where you are always welcome to go and where you can work, meet people, hang out, or be alone — all at your discretion.

Some people want to “be known” at their third place: they want to go to the same coffee shop at the same time a few times each week, see the same people behind the counter, be recognized by name, and hear the staff say something like “Hi Joe, the usual?”

Personally, I don’t want to be known that well. I don’t want people to know me by name. Most of all, I don’t want to have “a usual.” I just want to quietly walk in the door at a time of my choosing, be greeted but not recognized, not be asked how my wife and kids are doing, and then go find a place in the corner where I can think or get work done. But that’s just me.

The simple fact is, at least for me, being around other people — even people I don’t know or come into contact with — lifts my spirits. If I hear burr grinders whirring at a coffee shop, smell fresh espresso being pulled, and see smiling people greeting each other and chatting over the din of clanking silverware and background music, that really makes me feel alive somehow. It makes me feel thankful to be alive. And it gives me something to do away from home that changes up the scenery just enough to keep life interesting. As I mentioned before, keeping your mind busy and distracted helps keep your thoughts focused on productive things rather than destructive negative self-talk, at least in my case.

If you can, find a third place where you can be yourself and get what you need out of it. It may look different than mine, but that’s the whole point.

#6: Go To The Gym and Work Out!

When I first met with a therapist a few years ago, this was one of her strongest recommendations: to go to the gym several times a week. Not just to “take time” to work out but to “make time” to work out. For most of my adult life, I’ve always been focused on staying active and keeping myself fit, but as a business owner, I had always struggled with the thought that spending several hours at the gym was “selfish” because it meant time away from work, not making money, and only focusing on myself. Every hour spent at the gym, I thought, was an hour lost in terms of being responsible, working hard, and staying productive.

But I had it all wrong. For some reason, it took an outsider to notice this in me and tell me, “No, it’s not selfish. It’s absolutely essential. You have a family that relies on you. That’s why you need to take care of yourself.”

So, at least three days a week, I go to the gym, and I try not to stress about it anymore. I don’t rush myself, and I try not to feel bad if it takes an hour or even longer out of my day. For me, getting on a treadmill and running a few miles, puffing, and getting hot and sweaty helps melt away the stress better than just about anything else I know. And it has certainly helped me with my mental fitness as well.

Final Thoughts

I hope you find the tips above helpful if you’re struggling with depression. One thing I’m certain of is that there is no magic pill, and you can’t just be “cured” of depression if you have it. But these are some ways I’ve tried to deal with it over the years.

Above all, the most helpful thing I’ve found is just being able to talk about it and admit it with other people. If anybody reading this is having a tough time, just reach out to me, and I will be listening. You can talk to me.

Hi! Welcome to Free Soloing: a place for freelancers, solopreneurs, independent contractors, and anybody else who’s self-employed or works alone.

I’m Ron Stauffer, and I’ve been self-employed off and on for the past decade and a half. In that time, I’ve worked as a consultant or a freelancer. I get paid for the work that I do for my clients.

That can be rewarding sometimes, but being self-employed brings its own set of challenges. I started Free Soloing to help people just like me with the same challenges I have, including:

• working remotely

• project management

• time management

• stress management

• staying motivated

• sales tactics

• marketing your own business

• continuing education

• finding a work-life balance

• vision casting

• …and dealing with difficult clients!

When you’re employed by someone else, it’s relatively easy to just show up to work and do what you’re told all day. Plus, you often have the added bonus of paid vacation, health insurance, retirement accounts, and, oh yeah, paydays.

(Ahh, I remember the good old days when I worked for someone else and had a steady paycheck!)

And guess what? This will surprise people who think it must be fun being your own boss: actually, it’s really hard. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I started Free Soloing.

Several years ago. I realized that being self-employed is a lot like rock climbing. If you’re employed at a larger company, and you have coworkers, that’s like being on a climbing team. There’s a natural buddy system built in to keep you company and to protect you. There are ropes, helmets, carabiners, belay devices, and harnesses. All of these are designed to keep you as safe as possible.

But being self-employed is more like free soloing. In case you’re not familiar with the term “free soloing,” it’s going rock climbing alone, without help, without equipment, and without a safety net. That means it’s inherently very dangerous. Actually, that’s a good point. Why would anyone do that? That sounds crazy!

Leaving aside why you would do something so crazy, let’s just say working as a freelancer or solopreneur is just like that. Being self-employed is, figuratively, the same thing as free soloing. As free soloists, we have to rely on our own skills, our own gear, our own timing, and we have to do all the work ourselves alone.

But wait, here’s the thing: we’re not alone! There are tons of us out there doing the same thing, struggling with the same challenges while climbing our own mountains all at the same time. So let’s start talking, let’s meet each other. Let’s share tips and tricks and offer ourselves as a support system.

Did you know: in 2021, there was a study done that showed that over 57 million Americans performed freelance work? That is a lot of free soloing!

And that’s what this website is all about. I want those of us who are self-employed to know that we may work alone, but we are not alone. If that sounds interesting to you, visit freesoloing.com and check back often, as I work hard to create content that will help me help you and hopefully help all of us. Thanks for watching.

Being a solopreneur is hard. Really, really hard.

I’ve known this since I started my first company in 2008, over 16 years ago. But it didn’t fully register for me until 2018 when I got an email from one of my friends who was a coworker from many years before.

In it, he mentioned one of our mutual friends, Dan.

Dan was a nice guy my age, a fellow small business owner, and a solopreneur. He was a great guy that I referred some of my own clients to for IT work from time to time.

I had wondered why I hadn’t heard from Dan in a few months, and my friend solved the mystery for me.

“So you remember Dan? I found out that he committed suicide a couple of weeks ago. Sounds like he was so far in debt and super depressed. It’s pretty sad – he left behind a wife and 7 kids. Still can’t believe it.”

Dan was just like me: a self-employed husband and father, a small business owner, and, apparently, a guy struggling with financial difficulty and depression. However, unlike me, he decided that he couldn’t take it anymore, so he killed himself.

This rocked my world.

That could have been me… it may eventually be me, I thought.

But then I realized how selfish I was being, just thinking of myself.

Dan left behind a wife and seven kids, who now no longer have a husband and a father.

How hard must his life have been? How awful that he felt that his only way out of his difficult situation was to end his life. And how sad that he felt he couldn’t reach out to people like me who would have done whatever we could to help him out, give him support, or steer him in the right direction.

I pondered this all throughout the summer of 2018 and eventually decided that I would do whatever I could to try to make sure that this never happens again.

We who are self-employed lead a weird life: we go long periods of time without pay, we work on 100% commission, if our business takes a loss, it comes out of our pocket, we don’t have paid vacation or healthcare or other benefits, our spouses and friends have no idea what we do for a living, and taking vacation can be a miserable experience since we often take our work on the road with us everywhere we go.

Whenever we fill out legal paperwork, we look at the “employer” section and don’t know what to write. Every time we apply for a loan or financial account and the application says: “Please include your three most recent pay stubs,” we think, “Oh, crap, I don’t have pay stubs. Now I have to explain my situation.”

Most people who have a “normal job” have no idea what this is like. They don’t know what we’re struggling with, what we need, or how to be there to help us. They can’t relate to not having a steady income or paycheck, and they don’t understand things like how we need to wait to save up for big purchases but don’t know when that day will come since we don’t have a normal income stream. They don’t understand why things like “withholdings” are so complicated or why we do things like have to file extensions on our taxes.

Sometimes, we suffer silently and have struggles that are so unique that most people we know can’t relate to them, so WE MUST find a way to connect with each other and offer support and a listening ear.

We HAVE to be there for each other, say things like “I know how you feel,” and actually mean it.

If that resonates with you, please join me. I’m still making this up as I go, and I’m not sure exactly what Free Soloing can offer, but I know that, at a minimum, it can be a place of sympathy and understanding where we can join together with our hearts, our experience, and our skills.

Please. As I’ve said many times about solopreneurs and freelancers:

“We may work alone, but we are not alone.”

Let’s make this a promise.

Ron Stauffer

08/01/22