Building A Successful Freelance Career:More Choices For Getting Started Right

It’s a pleasure introducing readers to the growth of the freelance support ecosystem, the variety of ways that smart entrepreneurs have helped freelancers grow in competence, opportunity, and success. Interesting investors, innovative business and financial utility builders, and expert educators are helping freelance platforms and independent freelancers to do what they must do best: deliver value to clients. A particular subset of ecosystem partners is the subject of this article. We’ve seen a very positive explosion of help in educating and preparing freelancers to build their business and providing the tools they need to get started as a full-time freelancer or part-time side-gigger. 

Here are some of the different approaches entrepreneurs have taken:

Parkerdewey.com. ParkerDewey.com was the subject of a prior article in Forbes, and under founder and former VC Jeffrey Moss, it has continued to do great things. Despite the challenges and obstacles posed by Covid-19, Parkerdewey.com connected thousands of undergraduates, grad students, and recent college graduates to gigs with leading corporations, and over 80% of these young people are individuals from underrepresented populations in the workforce.

It was particularly exciting to learn that parkerdewey.com, in collaboration with the DeBruce Foundation of Kansas City, the Kansas Department of Commerce, and Board of Regents have taken a big step in growing their program, working together with 33 Kansas public colleges and universities to provide paid micro-internship opportunities for students through an impressive new program called the Kansas Micro-Internship Program. Moss, with his signature modesty, gives his co-creators the credit, but working with a large system like the state universities and colleges of Kansas is a game changer.

Techinterns.io. It’s helpful to think of techinterns.io, also mentioned , as a cousin of parkerdewey.com, but focused on tech students. While parkerdewey.com matches students and companies and provides micro-internship work experience for a wide range of occupational interests, techintern.io connects technically oriented students with part-time or project opportunity, and the chance to build a CV, get a job, or begin their freelance career. A second difference is the importance of the social action component of parkerdewey.com, which is not a feature of techintern.io. 

The startup was originally focused on students where it was incubated – the University of Waterloo, a top university in Canada – but has grown now to embrace tech student participants from top universities across North America like UC Berkeley and MIT. Founder Kingsong Chen describes their purpose this way: “We see interns as the best way to expand the tech hiring pipeline as well as find passionate builders for (any) company.” Feedback from companies has been very positive: the portal is easy to navigate and well supported. The students are consistently described as top notch. 

Underpinned.com. Albert Azis-Clauson, for many years training for a career in ballet, turned to freelancing to make money while a university student in London.  As a freelancer, he worked on a variety of consulting, strategy, and business development projects. But, he was frustrated by the lack of access freelancers had to helpful education or helpful tools about how to freelance successfully. 

That led to the creation of underpinned.com by Albert and his colleagues in London, a platform offering prospective freelancers an innovative and research-based process and rich tool kit to help them get started and thrive during the “fumble years” in freelancing.  We’ve all been there, the trial-and-error period of working through challenges and obstacles to create a viable business and a steady income. 

That means creating a network of clients and colleagues, developing a compelling value proposition, building well-defined market focus and target client, crafting a strong pitch, and establish fair value and pricing. These themes collectively provide a syllabus for freelancing competence, supported by a community and access to marketplace opportunities. As Albert explained: “We’ve equipped 50,000 freelancers with the tools and, more importantly, the confidence, to create their own future.”

DBMBootcamp.com. Living in Berlin, Deya Aliaga Kuhnle grew disinterested in a career in full-time consultant while an intern in one of the big firms. Her plan B: “I joined Upwork and applied to everything.” Thus shifting to a freelance career, Deya briskly experienced a wide variety of work, from voiceovers to administrative support. And, in so doing, she recognized a gap in freelancers’ access to education that would prepare a freelancer for part-time or interim roles as a digital business manager or chief of staff for startups and very early-stage companies.

 She also recognized that three skills were critical to the success of a fractional or interim digital manager: project planning and management, team management, and operational management. These competency areas, as well as covering finance and operational basics for freelancers, setting up your online business, and working closely with clients, form the curriculum that prepares professionals for interim and part-time chief of staff type roles at DBMBootcamp.com.

The program she created teaches these skills over the course of eight comprehensive modules, and her community now includes over 500 members, primarily women, from 30 countries. DBMBootcamp.com has intentionally kept the cost to students low to build a vibrant community and keep the program accessible to a large population.

Conestoga College.on.ca. Rose Mastnak joined Conestoga College in Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario (down the road from the University of Waterloo) after a successful freelancing and executive career to give back. That’s led to a thriving educational program for promising entrepreneurs and freelancers . Over the past two years, the team of educators and volunteer coaches and mentors have taken freelancer education to the next level by creating what the team calls the gig lab. 

The program was born in summer 2020, at the height of Covid 19, and is still working out the details of its program, but generally consists of 15 freelance students per cohort, a 15-week comprehensive program, and three cohorts are offered annually. The program is built around four key elements: concept teaching, hands on experience, team and individual based reflection and feedback, and active coaching by experienced freelancers. 

And, program graduates have access to Conestogagigs.ca, a soft-launched platform for interaction, exchange, and providing freelance opportunities. As Rose points out, “There is no ’hack’. We help our students see freelancing as a business requiring – as any business does – strong professional and business skill, excellent relationship skills, and good personal branding. Otherwise, it’s a race to the bottom on cost.”  

Each of these approaches helps individuals to create their freelancing future, and the variety is impressive. Other platforms, described in prior Forbes articles, intersect with the educational space; for example, platforms like Collective.com, Wethos.co and HoneyBook.com, who provide comprehensive business services for established independent freelancers, as well as communities like freelancebusiness.be and coaching platforms that offer different models of freelance incubation. 

The common element: Recognition that freelancing is a business requiring the skills that any small or large business leader must master. But, along with the benefits of diverse approaches, we have a collective responsibility to learn and improve from one another by sharing best practice: Let’s learn together how to provide education at scale, and work together to deliver high quality at fair cost. It’s the oxygen the freelance revolution needs to continue to grow. via_forbes