More Money Podcast - 150 Building a Successful Freelance Business - Matt Inglot, Host of Freelance Transformation

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Is it even possible to build a successful freelance business without taking on debt and without sacrificing all balance in your life? Yes there is, and Matt Inglot shares how. Long description: Before I went full-time self-employed, I had this crazy idea in my head that freelancing meant you’d always be worried about money coming in, would be living from gig to gig and would have no balance in your life. Well, a year later and I was definitely proven wrong, but this episode isn’t about my story, it’s about Matt Inglot from Freelance Transformation. Not only does he host his own podcast all about freelancing, he runs a successful freelance business himself building websites for high-level clients. But as you might imagine, it wasn’t always smooth sailing for Matt. For him to achieve the success he has now, he made a number of mistakes along the way. Luckily, he’s open to sharing all of them on the show and has a lot of other nuggets of wisdom to share, such as don’t quit your day job before your side hustle is making money, always try to keep your overhead low, and try to avoid taking out a loan for your business if you can. For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/150 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 150 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thanks for joining me for another episode and specifically this episode 150. That's like a, I'd say that's a milestone, a minor milestone maybe. I don't know. Last week I hit the milestone of getting 100 reviews on the Canadian iTunes, iTunes, the Canadian iTunes, which is pretty cool. And I am just kind of watching my stats and I am like super close to hitting my 500,000 downloads mark. Half a million downloads should be coming any day now. So that's pretty cool. So, you know, that's a milestone. That's a

milestone. 150 milestone that I mean, a lot of cool milestones happening. But anyway, enough about all that, you know, patting my ego myself. I have got a great episode for you today. I'm interviewing Matt Inglot. He is the founder of Freelance Transformation and the host of the Freelance Transformation podcast. As you can guess from the name of his brand, he's all about freelancing. And he has a really interesting story, which we'll get to in this interview. But it's really kind of deconstructing what freelancing is and getting rid of this ridiculous notion, this I think just very old idea that doesn't exist. It's not relevant anymore that when you're a freelancer, when you're self-employed, it means that you're struggling,

maybe financially, it's harder. You never know where your money is coming from. Honestly, that is the perspective that I used to have on freelancing. I don't know why. I just had it when I was younger. I thought that's the only way to have a steady financial situation is to basically be an employee working for a company. And yes, that is true. That actually can offer a lot of stability. But that doesn't mean that being a freelancer or being self-employed small business owner means that is the opposite. That's not true. And so we get into a lot of that kind of stuff in this episode. So I know you're going to really like it. But before I get to that interview with Matt, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is

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They'll go somewhere else to find you a better deal. Have a need to talk with a real human to help you craft your perfect financial plan? Then feel free to reach out to one of their plan pros who are available by phone and email seven days a week. These folks have a deep knowledge of best practices when it comes to all matters finance, and they're incentivized to do what's in your best interest always. PlanSwell is currently offering Mo Money podcast listeners not only a free financial plan, but also up to $20,000 worth of investments managed for free for the first year. If you currently have $20,000 invested in mutual funds, you could switch

and save somewhere around $500 in fees. To get started, visit planswell.com slash MoMoney. To learn more about Planswell and to see how it all works, check out my video review in the show notes or visit jessicamorehouse.com slash Planswell Review. Thank you, Matt, for joining me on the MoMoney podcast. I'm excited to talk about freelancing with you more in depth, very in depth. Thanks so much. I'm really excited to be here. Absolutely. So before I start asking you a ton of questions that I've got written down about freelancing, because you are definitely the guy to go to about all things freelancing, I want to learn a little bit more about your backstory and how you got to the place you are

today. And I think it started working kind of the typical kind of nine to five that we all started with. Yeah, definitely. We have a small twist that I experienced and got ejected from the 95 world very early on in my career. I was still going to school, in fact, university, or I guess for Americans, college. But yeah, basically, I had moved out of my parents' house. I was living on my own, all that good stuff, paying my own tuition. And the reason I was able to do all that is I was working for this amazing startup company that was doing this cutting edge virtual reality stuff. Unfortunately, it's a startup. And what do startups do most often? They've run out

of money. Yeah. So mine ran out of money. And because of that, I came into work one day and the mood was like really sober. The lights were kind of dim. And I tried to log in into my laptop and I discovered that my email's not working. Like, that's kind of strange and i tried to log in into my laptop and i discovered that my email's not working like that's kind of strange i go see my manager he's like matt we got to talk and that's where i find out that yeah i've been laid off oh that's the worst especially like huh that's weird my email doesn't work oh it's because you don't have a job because the company no longer exists or whatever. Yeah, exactly. That's how it went down. That sucks. So what did you do?

Well, you know, I was kind of in a tough place because I was on my own. I had, you know, everything to pay and no money to pay it with being a student, of course. So I started doing the only thing I knew how to do, which was building websites. And I figured maybe someone will pay me for this and hopefully that'll make more money than serving coffee or something. Totally. Chance of me getting another job at a really cool startup were pretty slim. So I figured, okay, I know how to build websites. I'm going to start building websites for people.

But I didn't really know how to get clients or any of that business stuff. So I just started telling people I build websites. Every single person I met, I don't care if I was at Starbucks and you were making my coffee order, you would find out that I built websites. And pretty soon I did get to build my first website. I met someone at a networking event that I had met previously and he needed a website built for his sister. And so I figured, hey, I can do this. I know how to do it. I'll do it for $300, which seemed like a lot of money for student Matt, which I realize is not a lot of money at all. But at the time, did you know, I'm curious, why did you pick that number? Did you just like, 300? Pretty much. Yeah. can we can get into pricing but yeah we'll get to that later yeah i i i wanted money and and i think at the time i was getting

paid like six or seven hundred a week at that startup so i figured well that's half a week's wages to do a website that sounds good except then i took a hundred dollars of that and paid my designer friend to do the design because i only knew how to do the programming. So that was my first $200 of freelance work. And it felt really good. I mean, again, it wasn't a lot of money, but it was kind of proof of concept that I could do it. So I kept talking to people. And then the next website someone was interested in, I figured, well, someone said yes to $300, so I'm going to charge $700. And they said yes. And they paid me up front, which was even better. I walked out of that store with a check for $700 and then I treated myself to $5 coffee because now I felt rich.

Exactly. Like, finally, I can afford that overpriced coffee. Exactly. And that was my second client. I just kind of kept going from there and building up clients and charging them more and more. And eventually it kind of seemed like this whole thing could actually work. And so in between all of that, I did get a little more corporate experience working a summer at BlackBerry, Canada's smartphone maker. And I realized I really don't like the corporate world. It's not a lot of fun. That was the most depressing time in my life, sitting in that BlackBerry cubicle. I'm sorry, BlackBerry. I love you guys. Yeah. RIP BlackBerry. I think it's still around.

It is around. Oh, you still have one. Oh my God god you're the last person on earth who has one i love him i love him i do but yeah i do miss that keyboard i used to have a blackberry i miss that keyboard i'll tell you it's fantastic yeah but the work environment wasn't i didn't find it fulfilling um i felt like half the people at the company were working like crazy over time. Half the people, I couldn't figure out what they did. And I just felt like it was hard to just sit there all day and do stuff that I didn't really want to do that didn't always make sense. And then I would come home and I'd be grumpy, you know, and I just need like an hour to unwind before anyone could really talk to me because, you know, it was just so hard working that job. So at that point, I was making enough freelance income that I thought, well, I don't really want to repeat this experience. And this website thing's kind of working. So then I decided,

all right, next summer going onwards, I'm just going full time with this. I'm not even going to try to get a real job. And 12 years or however many years later, here I am. Wow. Yeah, I like it. It's like, and 12 years later, here I am. There's the story. No big deal. Okay, so I definitely want to talk about what happened in that time frame because that is a long time.

That is actually probably longer than my entire career, like professional full-time career. And I know on your website, I kind of did a little searching and learning a little bit more about you. And you're very transparent about how it wasn't just like off to the races, I'm awesome. You know, the minute that you decide to do freelancing full-time

and starting your own business, it took several years to kind of figure things out. What happened in that seven years? Because that is also a long time. And, you know, what were some of your failures and how did you overcome them? And how did you not just throw in the towel? Yeah, so what happened was disaster, to be honest. So I had that initial success, right? And I thought I was a big deal. And I also grew up in Waterloo, Ontario, which is like Canada's little Silicon Valley. It's nothing but like tech startups and farms there.

Yeah. Really weird. Yeah. That's how it is. And so it was ingrained in me the whole time I was there that the way you build a business is you build it as quickly as possible, growth at all costs. And it's really important to build a big business. So I didn't know anything else. So I took that initial success of building websites for people. And in my mind, I somehow translated it into, I'm going to go and build a big business.

I'm going to build a big website development company. It's going to be the biggest website development company. It's going to be the best. It's going to be the best. Yeah, exactly. And without any of the knowledge, experience, or anything that would actually allow me to build this creation. But that didn't stop me because I am kind of a self-starter, really get things going. So it's a double-edged sword. So I decided to go big. I opened an office. And I think at that point, I was still technically attending school. So I was still a student and I was renting office space. School, by the way, had kind of fallen by the wayside, but I did get my degree at some point. But I had opened an office. I had hired my first full-time employee, a PHP developer. So now I could barely pay for myself to live,

but this other person was depending on me for their full-time salary. I had to pay a landlord rent. But it was kind of working. I was selling enough projects. I was making it work. And I hired a second full-time person. And then the office started feeling cramped. So I took on a giant loan of $70,000,

which I got because of this special program for entrepreneurs where they would basically give you interest rate prime loans to help recreate jobs in that area. And somehow I convinced them to give me that $70,000. I kind of regret that. I wish I had been less convincing. So I took that $70,000 and what did I do with it? I opened a bigger office and I renovated it. It was beautiful. We had like 11 colors of paint on the wall and kind of going for this whole Google look. And I started hiring more people. But the problem is at no point in that time had I really figured out where I actually want this business to truly go, not just, hey, it's a big business. I had definitely not connected all the dots of how to run this business successfully.

We were basically always a few months ahead of going broke. And as long as I could keep selling websites, everything would be okay. But as soon as I stopped, basically the whole thing would explode. And eventually it just caught up with me, the overhead, the overwork from that. I was basically working 80 hours a week. I'd wake up at five in the morning. I'd go through Tim Hortons drive-thru, get an extra large coffee and a cream cheese bagel, breakfast of champions, super healthy. I'd be in the office by 6am. And then I'd be leaving long after the cleaners had left. So I was like, well, that's not really

living. But I was determined to make it work, right? So I kept that going. And after a couple years, I just said, okay, I cannot do this. It finally caught up to me. Something's wrong because I'm putting in all this time. I'm paying other people's salaries. But at the end of the day, there were a couple of years where I made negative dollars. I lost money. And imagine putting in 80-hour weeks and having less than nothing, just debt. So that's when I finally said, okay, I got to change this or I got to stop it. Something's got to happen because it's not working. So I basically blew it all up overnight at the start of 2011. And I actually did something I should have done ages ago, which was to dive into my books

and figure out what's working about this business and what isn't. And the good news is after really struggling with this and trying to figure out what to do, I did discover that there was a beautiful six-figure profit business hiding in there. But that meant taking a different approach to things entirely. Getting rid of the office, getting rid of the full-time employee model, switching

to a contractor basis, and most importantly, building a business that actually fit my lifestyle. Because I didn't enjoy working 80-hour weeks and not having a life and having to go into an office. None of that was fun. Yeah. It doesn't sound like an improvement from when you're working in the corporate world. No, no. It was whatever the opposite of an improvement. It was the polar opposite. I had created a job for myself that didn't really pay me and worked me twice as hard as corporate, but I knew I didn't want to go back

to corporate. So I rebuilt it all as a virtual company. I built it around my own values instead of somebody else's. So I've dropped the whole act of trying to build this big business. I realized I don't like any idea of running a big business except maybe the money at the end. Nothing else appealed to me. And I made it all virtual. And then the pinnacle of that was a year later, a year after everything was falling apart, there I was in Poland on a two-month trip with my girlfriend, proposed to her at that time. And I was checking email once every two weeks and everything was running and I was living. I was traveling. I was able to do these things. And fast forward to now and I've kept this model where we still don't

have an office. I don't know what you'd have to do to convince me to get an office again. Everything's virtual. The clients have only gotten bigger over time. I've gone from building $300 websites to now a lot of our work is somewhere between $20,000 and $60,000. And I don't have to take on a lot of projects because I don't have all this overhead. And I can't imagine going back to corporate. No. I mean, I feel like for me,

one of the things that I was looking forward to when I was going to quit my job so I can work for myself was being able to not have to go to an office every day. I mean, doing that for almost three years, I mean, I guess four years with my job before that and just taking the subway during rush hour and just like that commute alone was like, I can't do this any longer. So I get it though, why you thought that in order to be kind of a successful business person, you needed to kind of replicate what all these other businesses typically do, which is have employees and have an office space and, you know, have the look of success. But that's really not

what success is, you know, but it's yeah, it obviously takes time to figure that out. And I'm glad to hear that you've been able to figure out what works for you and maintain it, which I think is like the important part. So on that kind of same wavelength, I really want to dive deep into a couple things. First, balance, because it seemed like you did kind of figure out how to balance it all, which I think is one of the hardest things for new entrepreneurs, new freelancers that are really focused on just, I need to make some money to pay my bills. And it's almost a little, for me especially too, I found that I need to always

check myself and make sure that I'm not, I don't have that scarcity mindset. I need to like stop thinking that it's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to run out of money tomorrow because I know that's not true. So how do you, I guess, kind of balance your time so you're not overworking yourself, not taking on too much? And then we can kind of maybe talk a little bit about some money mindset stuff because it seems like you have that under control too. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing I'll say is when you're starting out as a freelancer or any other business owner, you're doing anything else new, don't expect the first couple of years to be a cakewalk. No matter what advice we gave you today. There is an element of reality here that as you're figuring it out,

that's the time that it's the hardest. And you have to acknowledge it and you have to acknowledge the fact that not everything is going to work out on your first try. And I think sometimes I see people coming in with those expectations. Hey, I've been freelancing for three months. Why am I not making a hundred grand and working 20 hours and all this stuff? And it's like, well, actually it doesn't work that way. But in terms of balance, the biggest thing that's been very good for me and what I learned as a result of having that office and realizing

just how much we were doing that was sucking up all of our money and not producing anything was to focus on the big wins. So in particular, if you're a freelancer and you want to make sure you don't get trapped in working like 60 hours for clients, for example, is making sure that you are very selective of the projects that you take on. Some of the biggest mistakes people make, and I made this many, many times, is taking on the wrong projects. So we get into this idea that we need this client and we need them badly because, hey, clients pay us money. So we accept a lower rate than we would take, or we would accept the project that doesn't make sense. or oftentimes freelancers dramatically underestimate and underquote what the project will take. And then they find themselves in a position where if they had just said no to the client, that's it. They would have been free of the engagement. They could have found another client. Life would have been good. they say yes and now they're stuck working for three months on this project maybe making you

know half of what they expected to make while putting in double the time all because they didn't choose the client carefully at first or they didn't price themselves yeah right so they try to take on lots of clients oftentimes clients that are also too small like a three-hour project imagine how many three-hour projects you need to make a yearly salary. It doesn't work. So they chase all these small marginal wins instead of just focusing on how can I win three to 10 clients a year that are going to meet my income expectations and my work-life expectations. Now, do you feel like that is easier when you have kind of established yourself? Like, I feel like when you're just starting out, it's hard to kind of say no, because you're like, oh, I don't want to say

yes to this client that I know isn't really paying the rate that I, you know, have been asking. But I'm also like, there's no one knocking on my door or handing me money. So where is kind of, I guess, you know, how do you determine when to say yes and no and when to kind of just like, you know, bite your teeth and just do it? Yeah, absolutely. And that is the challenge of starting out. And when you don't have a portfolio, you don't have experience, by all means, take whatever you can get. But let's put a cap on this. That's like your first three to six months as a freelancer. Yeah, take whatever you can get. I have no problems with that. But then start getting

choosier. And the mistake a lot of people make is they never really define what makes a great project for them. This is something that I take my students through, for example. So one of the most basic exercises that you can do that's so important is just figure out what a comfortable, realistic annual income is for you. And then figure out if we assume that the maximum number of clients you can take on in a year is 10. And trust me, that's a lot of clients. You get diminishing returns after that. If the most number of clients you can take is 10 per year, then take your annual income goal and divide it by 10. And that's the smallest size of project you can possibly take on if you want this to be feasible. And I mean, that's a simple math

calculation. You want 50K a year divided by 10. Minimum size of client you can take on is 5K. You want 100K a year? Well, minimum size is 10K. You want 25K a year? Well, minimum size is 2.5K. Anything you take on that's lower is actually really going to set you backwards. So having those ideas of what makes sense for you, you know what to shoot for. And then you might be thinking, well, I can't possibly take on a 5K client. That sounds crazy. Okay, no problem.

You know that's where you need to get to to meet your income expectations. But now work backwards. So your first client's not going to be 5K, but maybe 1K is feasible. Get that 1K client, then work on the 2K client, then work to be 5K, but maybe 1K is feasible. Get that 1K client, then work on the 2K client, then work on a 3K client, but know that you're trying to get to 5K and know that until you get to 5K, you're not possibly going to get the 50K a year. So plan accordingly. So it's a difference between being ignorant of what you need to

reach your goals versus knowing that these are your goals, but you're not going to get there on day one. Now, this kind of does remind me of, I guess, the big problem that freelanc know, when you kind of discuss, you know, some of the things that you decided that you really valued what that you wanted. And that's why you quit, you know, working for the man and doing it on your own was financial security, which I thought that was really interesting. Because a lot of people I think think about going off on their own as the lack of security. I know, believe me, I got a ton of lack when I decided to leave my job. Everyone's like, you're so brave. I'm like, I am not doing this because I'm brave. I'm doing this because I need to be more fulfilled. I'm not happy. I want to do something different, all these other things. But I didn't also do it because I'm like, I want more financial security. Believe me, I was like, I'm giving up my financial security. Now, I think this has a lot to do with your mindset. And I think for me, I'm almost at my one year mark of doing this on my own. So I feel a little bit more confident in my ability to earn and for clients to keep coming back because you're always afraid

that they're never going to come back or, you know, that's the last client. I'm never going to earn another dollar. So what would you say in your experience? What kind of advice would you have for people to kind of get over this kind of mental block that, you know, they can only earn this much, people will only pay this much, there's not this, you know, that much opportunity in the industry I work in, etc. Yeah, definitely. So I guess first of all, there's two parts to financial security. There's security in the sense of I can wake up tomorrow and know that I can pay my bills. I can pay rent, all that good stuff, or pay the mortgage, whatever.

There's that kind of base level of security. When you're working for an employer, of course, if they let you go, as I found out early on, there goes your income. You got to scramble, find another job, right? It can be rough. And it's not always easy to find another job as probably millions of unemployed people have found out. But the second part of financial security is just the idea of having control over your income. So when you have a job, you know that you're getting paid X dollars a week and that's comfortable. But then you realize that you can't really make more than X dollars. You can't make

2X or 3X or so on. So it's, I think naturally becomes a very scarcity oriented situation where let's say, you know, you have $4,000 a month coming in every month and you somehow have to turn that $4,000 into everything you want to do. And the only way to stretch that dollar further is to find a way to cut costs, right? But if you have the power to make more money and you want to do more stuff, well, instead of making $4,000, you can choose to make $5,000 by working harder, by finding better clients, raising your rates, whatever it may be. So it's not just security in the sense of not running out of money, but security in the sense of knowing that you're not stuck between this rock and a hard place where you have all these bills and you have this fixed income and you can only really change a few things and kind of hope you can get

by. I really found that uncomfortable. But in terms of getting past that mindset of scarcity, when you get started, obviously it's hard. But the beautiful thing is there's tons of clients out there for whatever it is that you can possibly imagine that you're doing. There's tons. So if you go forth and put together a plan for finding clients, which is something that when I started out, I didn't even do. I learned how to do that later. So for example, it can be as simple as just contacting new people every single day. It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be Facebook ads. But you put together a plan for finding clients and you execute it faithfully every day,

you will find clients. And not only that, but you can actually control how many clients you find and how many clients you take on. So that's kind of first step is just getting past the idea that clients are somehow limited. There's an endless supply of them.

And there's some that you have an advantage over freelancers with, namely the ones that are close to you in your network. We all know the power of referrals. So almost every freelancer that starts out, their first few clients are referrals. And they have a natural advantage. That person's going to talk to them. They might not talk to anyone else. They might not have any idea that anyone else exists, but they know you. They trust you. So they're going to want to work with you. So that's how you typically get your first clients. But then you realize, hey, wait a minute, if I put together a good plan, I can start getting as many clients as I want. And as you start building experience and you start getting a better understanding of who has expensive problems you can solve, so where

can your skills create a lot of value? You can start raising your rates. And when I sold my first website for $300, I could not imagine having a client that's worth $150,000. Well, now I've got those kinds of clients. And the crazy thing is, it's just been leveling up and learning and building experience. Yeah, no, I think that's always the hardest thing for people that, you know, like the idea of working for themselves, but they're like, you know what, I have a skill set or I have an idea, but I don't know where to get clients. And believe me, that was my, you know, first thing too. I'm like, I don't know how to do that.

And it does kind of, like you said, start with like one person and then one referral. And then you get a little bit more confident, you get more experience, and then you figure it out. And I think also there's kind of the power of the hustle. And also just like, it's kind of exciting being what I like to call is like creating your own opportunity. I think that's the most fulfilling thing for me is I didn't realize how capable I was because I used to always, you know, be put in these jobs and they'd be like, this is what your job is. And I'd always kind of be like, hey, you know, we could also do this and this and this to make, you know, the company more efficient, earn more money, blah, blah, blah. And there'd always be like, no, no, no, just do what's on your job description. And it was frustrating.

You're a level two accountant and this is what you do. And it's super frustrating. So I liked the idea not only to be able to like, wow, I can earn technically whatever I want, but also like this idea of I can almost kind of do whatever I want and try new things and see what works and what don't work. But there is a lot of risks. I guess I would like to talk a little bit about that because there's a lot of benefits to being self-employed, being your own boss, but there's a lot of drawbacks. We can't sugarcoat it. What are some of the potential risks? And I would really also like to talk about what are some things that people should do to kind of financially prepare themselves

to take this leap? I think that's another thing that some people don't, like it's the last thing that they think about. It's like, hey, do you have an emergency fund? You know? I think the biggest risk is you're going to jump into this and then not do the work, to be honest. This is where I truly see people fail is they get into the idea of liking the idea of running a business, but then they don't wake up every day and execute. So for example,

I mentioned having a plan for getting clients. There's lots of ways to get clients and it doesn't have to be complicated. But when you don't do it, you don't see any success. And that's really where people fail. And of course, when you say risk, what you're really thinking of is, well, you're going to run out of money and you're going to become homeless and then dogs will eat your body in the streets and all that kind of fun stuff. I mean, all of that stuff is very temporary, right?

Yes. Yeah, it's true. It's not forever. Yeah, exactly. So I don't want to say that running out of money is not a big deal, but it's kind of not a big deal. And I know because when I rebuilt my agency at the beginning of 2011, not only were we out of money, but the bank account

was negative $40,000. Yeah, that's a panic mode. Yeah. And I climbed out of that. And what was the reality of that? Well, I had to borrow some money. I had to live very cheap. I had to be uncomfortable. I couldn't go and drink beer every night and go to movies and all that fun stuff everybody in the corporate world was doing. But I fixed it. It's not like you can't get another job, right? That's the thing. If you do decide to go this route a year later, if it all fails, fine. Go back to work. What have you lost? You've lost a year of sitting in a cubicle and you've got a great story to tell over that beer that you can now afford. So that's why it's hard to say that kind of risk is really that serious. The real risk, again,

is that you're going to go and you're not going to do anything because that's when you're not going to have success. That's when you're going to run out of money. But even then, things will be okay. Well, I guess you kind of bring up another really interesting point. At what point should people be ready enough to do it? Because I'm part of a lot of Facebook groups. A lot of them are promoting, you can earn money being a blogger and blah, blah, blah. And lots of these people are like, I'm ready to quit my job to blog. And they're like not earning an income yet. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I cannot imagine quitting my day job.

That's, you know, paying my mortgage and all my bills and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then quitting my job and then and then, you know, with that free time, then I'll figure out my business. Like that's clearly not the way to go. But I think some people think that, well, I don't have time to dream up a business while I'm busy working. Don't I have to quit my job and then figure it out? What would you say to those people? It's definite nonsense for sure. Yeah, that's terrifying. And going back to the idea of risk, I mean, don't get in a car, point it to go off a cliff

and then be surprised when you go off a cliff. And that's where people create this needless drama. So they will quit their jobs with no money, no plan, nothing and say, well, I've got 12 months of savings and I'm going to make this work. And then inevitably halfway through, they start remortgaging their house

and getting into crazy personal debt. You don't need to do any of that to become an entrepreneur. So again, if you insist on pointing that car off a cliff, it will dry up off a cliff, but you don't need to do that. The simple solution is whether you're starting a blogging business or freelancing or doing something else, the, like do it on the side first. There's ample opportunity to do that. It sounds like that's how you built your business. Certainly most of the people that I know that have been successful have done it the same way. I mean, I was going to school and doing clients in my spare time. I mean, that's just what you had to do. So yeah, it's more work in the beginning. You're probably going to your job for 40 hours a week, another 10 hours for commuting. So it's 50

hours of your week gone and now you got to scramble and find another 10 hours to work. That means you're going to have to cut out Netflix. You're going to have to do some things different to find the time. But that's way better than just jumping into this thing with no plan and just hoping that you're going to outlast your savings. You should definitely have some sort of fund when you do quit your job and decide to go full-time. But when you're deciding to go full-time, it's because you're already swamped with clients and there's no other choice. You have to do it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I think that is great advice. Well, Matt, I'm going to let you

go soon. But before I do, because I feel like I could probably talk to you for like another 30 minutes because you have so many great points of wisdom. But just leaving listeners with one piece of advice that you're so glad that you eventually figured out or you wish that you had when you were starting out. There's so many, but the one I'll give you because I think it'll be most useful to listeners. If you want a successful freelancing business, if you want your own clients, there's a secret ratio that a lot of people don't realize. But I discovered this through my own work and through my podcast. If you're planning to build a successful business and reach your income goals,

the split of your time between client work and working on your business and specifically promoting yourself should be about 50-50. And there's rationale behind it. I've interviewed something like over 140 people on the Freelance Transformation Podcast. And this is a question that I ask them a lot. I ask them, how much time do you spend promoting yourself versus time on client work? Inevitably, my guests would give me answers around that. In the most extreme, they might spend 70% of their time in client work, 30% promoting themselves. But that's the extreme. I never heard anyone give me a higher ratio than that. Then I speak to students that are struggling to make freelancing work and their ratio is completely off. They've built their business around this idea that 90 or 100% of their time will be spent on client work and like 10% will be spent on this like business stuff. And those are the people that struggle. So if you want to set yourself up for success, anticipate that half your time is going towards

promoting yourself and making the business work, half the time towards client work, and then figure out your fee structure, your calendar, everything else around that ratio. And in that case, it's very hard for you not to be successful. Great advice. Really great advice. Thank you so much. So if anyone wants to look you up, hit you up for some more great advice, where can they find you? Yeah, absolutely. Go to Freelancetransformation.com. Join my mailing list. I write about all these freelance concepts all the time.

And of course, there's the Freelance Transformation podcast. You can find that in your favorite podcast player. Awesome. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining me. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for having me. And that was episode 150 with Matt Inglot. Make sure to visit him at Freelancetransformation.com and check out his podcast all about freelancing.

If you want to dive more deep into that world, it's called the Freelance Transformation Podcast. You can find it on iTunes and wherever there's a podcast app or whatever. And make sure to check out the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 150. You're going to put a lot more information about what we talked about in this episode. A couple things to share with you. So don't go far. Here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. Support for this episode comes from Planswell. Have no idea what you're doing with your money? It sounds like you would need a financial plan to get your money organized. And lucky for you, you can do it yourself online with a super smart technology company

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handle of your financial future has never been more accessible. And PlanSwell is currently offering Mo Money podcast listeners not only a free financial plan, but also up to $20,000 worth of investments managed for free for the first year. If you currently have $20,000 invested in mutual funds, you could switch and save somewhere around $500 in fees. To get started, visit planswell.com slash mo money. Again, that's planswell.com slash mo money. And to learn more about Planswell, make sure to check out my video review either in the show notes or at jessicamorehouse.com slash planswell reviewview. All right. So last week, I shared that I was on a vacay to Mexico, sitting in some margaritas, eating some guacamole, way too much, but also

not enough. You can never have enough. And this is me giving you a public service announcement about how important it is to go on vacation. I used to work in a job, I mean, as many of you probably have experienced, where none of your co-workers actually take their vacation days. Or when they take their vacation days, it's to do something like move or go to the doctors or take an exam or something that has nothing to do with actually relaxing. And those people got burnt out and they were stressed out. And I mean, I can blame myself too. I did the exact same thing and it's just not healthy. We as humans need a break. We cannot work all the time. We're not productive when we don't rest. So this is me, Jessica, post-vacay,

giving you just that little nudge. If you've been thinking, hey, I think I maybe should set aside some money in that budget to save it for a vacation. Hell yes, you should. So please do that. Vacations, they're very, very important for well-being. Okay, okay, okay, good. So I actually have a special little contest. So I share this first with everyone who is on my email list. Make sure to get on there because I share a lot of good stuff with those people only. So it's just jessicamorris.com slash subscribe is how you'd get on there. But my contest is I'm giving away three signed copies of the second edition of John Robertson's book, The Value of Symbols. So it's all about getting to the nitty gritty of investing,

robo-advisors, DIY investing, all that good stuff that we talk a lot about on the show. So if you want to enter for a chance to win his book, which I highly recommend. It is great. Go to jessicamorehouse.com slash value of simple contest. And it's like, there's like three questions in this form, and then you're entered to win. So make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash value of simple contest to enter to win a copy of his book. Honestly, that is really all I've got right now um i'm just trying to you know get back into the swing of things so uh i'm gonna leave it there and i'm gonna say a big thank you for listening thank you to everyone he was giving me a review make sure if you haven't already and you like what you're listening to i hope you do please uh leave me a review on itunes stitcher wherever

you can check me out on YouTube too as well. And let me know what you think about the show. I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. And I would, you know, love you forever, basically. Anyways, enough of that. I'll see you back here next Wednesday for another episode of the Mo Money Podcast.