SUMMARY
- To freelance or not to freelance? Mike Shreeve, founder of The No Pants Project, offers three reasons why he believes everyone should start a freelancing business, whether they’re looking to quit their day job or just earn some extra income. He also talks about why freelancing is the best business to start first for aspiring entrepreneurs.
- Reason #1: Freelancing is the fastest way to get money.
Many students in The No Pants Project have landed clients in 24-72 hours. Though not everyone will get clients that quickly, freelancing is still the fastest way to go from zero to actual money in your pocket no other business model can provide that. - For example, a dropshipping business takes weeks to set up. Even if you manage to make sales, you’re lucky if you have 10 percent margins. You then need to scale, which takes even more time. It will take you weeks, if not months, to make a decent income from dropshipping. On the other hand, you can be set up to freelance by this afternoon and get your first client within a couple of days.
- Even if you think you don’t have any skills, there are many clients who will happily hire beginners. You can get paid to learn your skills rather than having to pay to learn those skills. This means you probably won’t make a ton of money with your first clients, but you’ll be making enough money faster than you could with dropshipping, information marketing, selling products online, or garage sale flipping.
- Reason #2: You get paid to learn when you freelance. It doesn’t matter where you’re at to get started in freelancing. You refine your products and services through working with clients; you get paid to build your business. Freelancing is a very realistic way to dip your toe into the world of entrepreneurship.
- Mike worked as a freelancer for 10 years before launching his own information marketing and coaching business. During those 10 years, he worked with people in the industry that he knew he wanted to start his own business in someday.
- Let’s say you want to start your own ecommerce store. You could do that right away and learn things the hard way, or you could take that faster path, which is figure out what skills you have, approach those businesses you want to be like, and work with them as a freelancer. In this way, you get paid to develop your skills and learn their business at the same time.
- Reason #3: Freelancing is the ultimate freedom.
As a freelancer, you have very big margins, so your business can keep going even when you take your foot off the gas. You also get to set your own schedule and take days off when you want to. - Freelancing allows for a significant amount of freedom and flexibility that’s not possible in other business models. A lot of people want to start a business and they think they want to have a big business with an office and a big team. However, they don’t realize a big business comes with big problems as well.
- Freelancing doesn’t have to be your life mission. It can be, but you can just use it to launch yourself into other ventures. Whether you go full-time or part-time with freelancing, you have more control over your happiness and job satisfaction.
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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT: 3 Reasons Everyone Should Freelance
Hello my dear friends, Mike Shreeve here. How you doing? I want to give you three reasons why I think everyone is capable and probably should start a freelancing business if they’re looking for income, whether it’s a side hustle, or they’re trying to replace their job and why I think freelancing is the best business to start first before you start really any other business.
Reason #1: Freelancing is the fastest way to get money.
So the first reason is, and it should be fairly obvious, freelancing is the fastest way to get money. Many of the students in our No Pants Project coaching program, they’ll get clients within 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours.
Now is that every single person who ever starts a freelancing business gets clients that quickly? No, but the thing about it is there is no other business model, not in real life, there’s lots of people would tell you there is, there’s no other business model where you can go from zero to actual money in your pocket, not just revenue. So let me give you an example, and I’ll make it that quickly. So let me give you an example. So let’s say drop shipping, right? Everyone’s really big on real hot on drop shipping right now, all the gurus are telling you go start a Shopify store.
But let’s actually work this through and figure out what would take to do that. Well first you have to identify a product that’s already being sold, right? Typically, it’s from China or something like that. You have to build a website. That’s going to take you a couple of days. Then you have to put some copy up. If you don’t know how to write good sales copies, stuff that’ll actually convert, it’s going to take you some time to learn and to figure out. Then you got to do Facebook ads. Well, if you don’t know how to do Facebook ads, that’s a learning curve.
You’re going to have to figure out how to do Facebook ads. You’re going to have to figure out how to do it profitably. Then you have to run that traffic and there’s email nurturing sequence, there’s backend sales, et cetera, et cetera. Even if you do make sales, let’s say that you’re really, really fast and really, really good at drop shipping, which you wouldn’t be if you’re just starting out.
Anytime you start something new, you’re just not that good at it and that’s part of being human being. But let’s say somehow you have this hidden talent, you were just born to be a drop shipper.
Okay, well a couple of weeks into it, you’re finally making sales and maybe you’re making sales profitably. But what does profitably mean when it comes to drop shipping or doing a Shopify store? When it comes to drop shipping or doing a Shopify store, you’re lucky if you have what’s called 10% margins. Which is after you pay the dude in China for the product, after you pay shipping and handling, after you pay Facebook ads cost, after you pay the monthly fees for Shopify and all the other little add-ons that they asked you to buy, because they’re all affiliates for it.
Then after you pay your support staff, because you’re not just going to sit here and do customer service emails all day, after you pay all that, let’s say you make $100, you get to bring home 10. Okay. So this is after weeks. You make $100 in sales, and you make $10. Well that means you’re going to have to scale.
This is the thing that nobody tells you about. It takes a second to scale. You can’t just put a share button on Facebook ads and all of a sudden you’re making a ton of money. You have to nurture the ads. It’s like…
So long story short, something like drop shipping, which is what everyone is trying to sell you, you have the get rich quick scheme lately, still takes weeks if not months before you’re really making any decent income.
Whereas with freelancing you could buy this afternoon, be set up, ready to roll and get your first client within a couple days.
Now you may say, “Okay, I get that. I see. Businesses are ready to pay now. You don’t have to have a nine month closing sequence. People will pay you for your lot.” All that stuff. But you may also then say, “But what if I’m new? What am I going to sell? What if I don’t have a lot of skills?”
Reason #2: You get paid to learn when you freelance.
Here’s again why I recommend freelancing over anything else. It is because there are many, many clients who will happily hire beginners.
In other words, you can get paid to learn your skills rather than having to necessarily pay to learn those skills. So when I very, very first started my freelancing business, many of you know I was homeless at the time, I didn’t have skills. I wasn’t a copywriter when I got my first copywriting client. I was transparent and open. I can tell you I didn’t make a ton of money off of those early first clients.
But I said, “Look, here’s the deal. I want to be a copywriter. I’m willing to do what it takes. I’ll read the books. You gave me the training, I’ll do it all.” Those clients said, “Great. In exchange for that, we’re not going to pay you the highest prices ever, we’ll pay you enough.” I was making money two weeks after I figured out what freelancing was and knew how to get clients, where the clients were hiding and where they were. Within two weeks I was making enough money to go get, at first it was a motel and then finally an apartment.
I could not have done that with drop shipping. I could not have done that with information marketing or selling products online. I couldn’t have done that with Etsy. I couldn’t have done that with garage flipping. I mean, I don’t have any cash. So I had to do something where I basically said, “I will work for you.” So the beautiful thing about freelancing is one, it’s very quick and then two, it really doesn’t matter where you’re at to get started. So many of our students, for example, the No Pants coaching program, they maybe have some skills-ish, but through the process of actually working with clients is how you refine your products and your services.
In other words, you get paid to build your business, unlike nearly every other business model that the next online Lamborghini guru guy’s trying to sell you. So it’s a, in my opinion, a very realistic way to dip your toe into the world of business, right? So, for example, I worked as a freelancer for almost 10 years before I launched the No Pants project, to then turn around and have my own information marketing and coaching business. For those 10 years, I got paid at first, not a ton, but then eventually $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month, 30 until my highest month, which was about $40,000.
I did that for a couple months in a row and I was like, “Well, that’s too much.” It was a little too much work, but $40,000 a month as a freelancer. During that whole time I was working with people in the industry and in the business that I knew someday I wanted to start my own business in. So, for example, let’s say that someday you do want to have your own eCommerce store. Well you could right now go start your own store, learn it the hard way, spend the money on the ads, do all these different things, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a very high risk model.
It’s not going to work that quickly. You are going to lose money at first. Everybody does when they do those kinds of business things. You’re going to buy product after product, after product, because they’re going to keep promising you all these things. Then eventually you’re going to figure it out. It could be months, could be years down the road. That’s how a lot of people do it and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how some people’s journeys are.
Figure out what skills you have and find your superpower.
Or, you could take the faster path, which is figure out what skills you have, find some kind of superpower, then go approach those companies that you want to be like the people who are already successfully running eCommerce companies, or are already successful coaches, or are already successful… I don’t know, whatever. Selling pipes online for plumbing. I don’t know. Whatever business you want to do as a freelancer, you can get paid not only to develop your skill but to learn their business.
Because if you follow our methodology, one of the things that we say is that for everybody that you work with, the best way to turn it into like a retainer or a long term or to get paid more is to keep asking, what else can I do? How else can I help you? That’s exactly what I did. 10 years ago, I was just writing emails for people and it eventually evolved to the point where I was starting to become director of marketing, sitting at the table with the higher ups and as the C suite level and all that kind of stuff. Having meetings, getting flown around and all that kind of good stuff.
It started with, let me do this simple thing, and it eventually grew into, now I know the whole entire business. So when I started my coaching business, right after 10 years of working in other people’s coaching businesses, when I finally launched my first products, it was like really, really fast. So we went from basically zero to about $60,000 a month within six weeks. Which is really, really like that’s where we were setting records basically. But it was because I cheated. I cheated in the fact that for 10 years somebody had paid me to learn how to do that.
So that’s number two. So number one is its super, super fast. Number two is you basically get paid to learn.
Reason #3: Freelancing is the ultimate freedom.
Then number three is there is no flexibility that I’m aware of, similar to the flexibility of being a freelancer. It is because… I mean I could probably give you an hour long presentation about why that is, but let me give you sort of the highlights.
Number one, as a freelancer, your margins are very big, so you need to do a lot less work. So remember we talked about, let’s say the, if you’re doing drop shipping, for example.
If you’re doing drop shipping and you’re trying to build an eCommerce store, maybe you’re doing Etsy or something, somebody pays you $25 you get to see $2 and 50 cents of that. What that means, you got to be constantly marketing, churning, trying to sell and constant, constant, constant. It’s one of those situations where when you let your foot off the gas, your business stops. With freelancing, that’s not the case. So, for example, many of my clients that I have in my freelancing business, they’ll pay me $8,000 a month minimum, and I have multiple of them.
The beautiful thing is, is that because I don’t have a big team, I don’t need to pay people salaries, I don’t have to deal with 24/7 customer service, right? I’m not running a software company with customer service issues. Because I’m simply delivering a service for somebody who’s paid me a decent amount of money, I get to dictate my schedule in such a way that is unlike really any other business.
So, for example, if I have a project that’s due for a client on Friday, I can get it done on Wednesday and be done. Then Thursday and Friday I get the whole day off.
It’s not like when you run a business. So, for example, the No Pants project, which is the business that I own, it’s one of the three income streams that I have. I do self-publishing fiction, I do freelancing business and I have the No Pants project. No Pants project is like a 24/7 business. There are people emailing us on the weekends. There are people contacting our customer support with, et cetera, et cetera. There’s coaching needs and all this kind of stuff. That’s not true in my freelancing business.
One of the things that we teach in our No Pants coaching program is the need to set appropriate boundaries, but also to control your schedule for the freedom to live your life. In my case, I that freedom to create two other income streams. I use that freedom to build up my fiction business. I use that freedom to build up the No Pants project. Okay. Which is a legacy thing for me wanting to give back after really 10 years of an incredible career in freelancing. Lucky career I should say. That almost made it sound like I knew what I was… like I somehow was better than everybody. It’s not the case.
I’m about as average as it comes. I just got very, very lucky in who I got to work with. So, but the point is that when you are a freelancer by the very nature and design of the business, you have a significant amount of freedom and flexibility. How you use that freedom and flexibility, there’s a couple of examples I’ll give you. So, for example, we have this amazing student, Bill, who ironically, now I think about it, he had an eCommerce company. He was working 80 hours a week in that eCommerce company.
He eventually sold that company to his management team and got out of it. Then basically said, “Okay, all the skills I’ve developed in that company, I’m going to now turn around and help other companies with as a freelancer.” He went from 80 hours a week to less than 40 hours a week making the same exact money, owning a really successful eCommerce company back to freelancing, and he was talking about how he was able to go pick up his kids from school, how his days are much slower, a lot less stress. I get that a lot of people want to start a business.
They think they want to have a big business. They think they want to have the office, they want to have the big team and they want to have the et cetera. The problem is, the bigger your business, the bigger your problems. Right? So, for example, with the No Pants project, we just… I swear, I mean, we’re going on a crazy hiring spree. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I’ve been a freelancer for 10 years. I’ve seen inside a lot of my clients business. Even I did not anticipate how difficult it is to build a team, to be responsible for those people, to do the office thing, to et cetera.
I look at my freelancing business and I’m like, “Dang that is like way less stress than what I’m trying to do now.” So, the point that I’m trying to make here is that there’s flexibility in freelancing that allows for freedom of movement, not just…
Many of our students in No Pants coaching program do the RV lifestyle thing, or they do the digital nomad thing where they’re traveling all around. That’s cool, that’s great and I love that. But freelancing is a good foundational business and income stream to have because it allows you to have the flexibility and freedom to work on other stuff.
Like I said, so in the beginning of my freelancing career, when I didn’t know what I was doing, I stayed pretty busy. It was full time. Then, eventually, after I was able to figure out the things that we now teach in the No Pants coaching program, those central ideas which allow you to have the flexibility to get paid higher for your services, when I finally learned that, I took my financing business from 40, 50 hours a week to now, these days I only work every other week. I only work every other week making more than I made when I was doing 50 hours a week in my freelancing business, but also I don’t even work 40 hours in those every other weeks. It’s about 25 to 30.
Now I did that for, I don’t know, maybe two or three months before I got really bored. So I got really bored, I was only working every other week. I was married, had one kid at the time and I thought, “Man, I want to do more stuff.” So I really knuckled down and started writing my fiction, built up my self-publishing fiction business to a certain income level, and then that went into a more management mode you could sort of say. The systems were in place, everything was going. It didn’t take all of my energy and creativity. So then I started the No Pants project.
Which has been a very big thing, a little bit bigger than I thought. But that has been the cycle and the whole time the freelancing business has been there because it’s so flexible. So those are the three reasons why I think anyone and everyone should start a freelancing business. Number one is… Well, we’ll go backwards. So number one, it’s very flexible. I believe that it’s something that you can start now and you can continue to have it. Whether you go full time with it or whether you do it part-time, which gets you out of your job so you can do a different passion business that you’re passionate about, freelancing is the thing that will always be there.
People will always need people to help them with things.
Number two, you get paid to learn. I mean, I’ve developed most of my skills because someone paid me to learn them. Then number one, it’s about as fast as you can get realistically speaking. Okay. Look, there’s lots of people who talk a lot about online and all those gurus, all those Lamborghini guys, overnight riches, don’t buy into that stuff. It’s not real. You’ll only lose money, hurt yourself and then you’ll feel bad about yourself. Because it’s like, “Oh, everybody else is doing it, but I’m not.” That’s just not real.
The only real way to go really, really quickly is to go straight for a service based business. Freelancing in my opinion is the best way to do that. When you combine all those three things, you realize that when you start a freelancing business, it doesn’t have to be your life mission. It doesn’t have to be this thing that I’m starting a freelancing business because this is what I’ve always wanted to do, or my life’s mission is to be a freelancer doing this thing. It doesn’t have to be that way. It can be and that’s cool, but it doesn’t have to be. Because it doesn’t have to be, it means that freelancing is a leveraged income opportunity.
Meaning, you can use the opportunity of freelancing to forward yourself into other things. Similar to how some people will just take a job because they know that job will get them a promotion later on. They don’t love the job, but they know it will get them a promotion and later on, same with freelancing. Except, with freelancing, you have more control over your happiness and job satisfaction. Because if you don’t like people that you’re working with, you fire them, and you go get different clients. If you don’t like what you’re doing, you change what you offer.
If you don’t like how much you’re getting paid, you control your client intake, right? You control how many clients you get. So when you combine all of this, what you really see is that freelancing is a tool more than it’s even an income stream. When you look at it in that, sort of, from that macro level, from that higher level, you see what an incredible opportunity it is. It’s why I’m so passionate about sharing it with people, why we’re doing so much at the No Pants project to get this in front of people.
I mean, forget about the fact that by 2027 supposedly, half of all the, at least American workforce, is going to be freelance. I just think it’s a great opportunity for people to take advantage of. So those are the three reasons. Hopefully that has been helpful. I will see you on the next video.
