How can a freelance student become a manager
A few years ago, I was a student with no money, to whom studying at the university seemed boring and meaningless (and since then my opinion has not changed). So, I left school and began freelancing. After 6 years, I am writing this text to identify the most important ideas that made me, at first, a well-paid “frame” and then head of a small web services development team.
Do not be a specialist. Learn to act
The main resource for a developing person is not knowledge and experience. And not even money or connections.
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The environment of knowledge is now changing too quickly and speaking with confidence that even after five years, the profession of a programmer (for example) will be equally in demand - it is impossible. And there is no doubt that in 10 years all the existing knowledge of the same programmer will become useless without constant updating in the process.
The accumulation of knowledge and experience is a linear process, and therefore not the most effective. A specialist always has a clear salary ceiling, which is practically impossible to overcome (even continuous linear growth will not work here).
A bet should be made not on a specific specialization, but on the ability to make decisions in a changing environment, using our own and other people's knowledge, money and other resources precisely as temporary resources for a specific task.
Professionals with knowledge can always be hired.
But each specialist can only make his own piece of the project. In fact, he cannot do anything whole and does not see the big picture. So, it always embodies the ideas of others.
Develop, choose and act cannot be learned at the institute or by books. Books are useful for reading, but more useful is active practice.
Be yourself. Be different
People are different. You should not rely on other people's ideas and drive yourself into a frozen form of how you think, or even worse, according to others, you need to work and what to do. In fact, you shouldn’t focus on anyone or anything. Explore yourself and develop your way in life, rather than trying to match something.
You will not become strong in what you do not like and what is not yours. One who imitates always catches up with others.
Go your way to what is close to you.
Be different, and you can what others are not able to. And this is appreciated.
As a result, you will choose a niche (not a specialization, but an area of ​​development), which is more pleasant for you, closer. In which you are like a fish in water.
Relatively speaking, if you are inclined to rest - work on projects related to rest. Love to communicate - negotiate. And if you like to draw - create a design studio. Do what you are interested in doing.
Create a team
A freelancer is a man-company. If you take orders remotely, half of the work has already been done.
Next you need to take one or more partners, choose the person responsible for the projects and take the projects as a whole. The most interesting thing, of course, is to tighten up the skills of negotiation and learn to look for orders by yourself, forming a team around you.
Do not rent an office.
Of course, neither this nor the other ideas described in the text are rules. On the contrary, it is solely about the fact that you should not limit yourself to excess. The office is superfluous, but this is not the rule.
The most important thing to look for orders is to have something to offer. That is, a team capable of implementing projects qualitatively in a good niche.
Work less and manage more
If you have created a team, do not postpone hiring an assistant who will do what was your specialty for you. If you are a higher level, your level will raise the work of an assistant. Strive to gradually withdraw from the production chain and control its quality at all stages, and not to do the work personally.
This will then allow you to hire more specialists and work in parallel on a large number of projects. One way or another, increase the flow.
Be engaged in strategic goals to expand the case, rather than solving minor issues. It will be impossible if you are a leading specialist.
Your business will grow at a rate of about twice a year. This means that if today you need to solve one thing, in 4 years you will need to solve 16 cases. Therefore, free up your personal time to be able to solve them. Your level as a manager will be determined mainly by your strategic abilities and the ability to resolve any issues that arise as quickly as possible.
To decide does not mean to do. To solve means to set tasks for others and quickly find answers to any questions.
Grow your brand
Even one freelancer is a brand. Moreover, the team.
Of course, there are far fewer known teams than unknown ones. And speaking of the brand, I do not mean the need for mass advertising and worldwide fame.
But you, in your eyes and in the eyes of customers, other people, should become a brand, a team that has a clear goal and a niche in which the work is carried out.
To begin with, you need to understand your features - what your team can do best and communicate these features to others. Shape them.
Work in the expensive segment
The simple rule: do not do shit and do not work with idiots.
This applies to both customers and partners, professionals. If you see that work does not go with someone, that a person is inadequate, do not waste your time working with him. If the customer does not understand the scope of the order even after the explanations, if the further work has lost its meaning, change the customer, learn how to work with more understanding people.
If there is a person in your team, whose personal interests, ambitions and hysteria for which it overlaps the team’s goals, do not work with it.
Do not make low-quality products. Go to the highest level in your segment. Strive to work with the most serious customers.
Set a goal to live in your home in a resort area.
An unexpected point for the topic of the article. But still - choose where to live.
If you work at a computer - you are ready to work remotely. So, you can choose for yourself where you live.
I happened to live in several cities of different sizes. The last couple of years I live in private houses in the suburbs.
Megapolises are not designed for a comfortable and pleasant life and, in principle, are created not for people, but for consumption and production. From my point of view, only a person who has nothing to compare with can choose life in an apartment in Moscow. Rhythm, lifestyle, direction of thoughts in such places was created in order to use a person for the city.
“The city is an evil force; he is dragging on. ” It is foolish to work an average of 8 hours a day at a frantic pace, without having time for a tasty, measured lunch, to go anywhere for two hours, and to spend a decent part of the miserable gap on rest for purchases.
Tired sad people in the evening metro with people deprived of facial expressions or in a mask of alienation. A society that measures success through the ability to buy and not live comfortably and happily in their own pleasure is doomed to idiocy.
More humane resort cities, suburbs and private homes. They are made more for people than for optimizing distances and the ability to squeeze more out of us.
It's not about how much you are able to spend or earn a month. The point is whether you like your life, your lifestyle.
If you don’t like your life, that you spend a lot of money, you work a lot just to live in the megalopolis - it’s pointless.
Meanwhile, a house outside the city is comparable to an apartment of a similar area.
If you have got a house - you can always attach anything to it, hang a punching bag in the yard, put a tennis table, create a garden, make a gazebo in which you can work most of the year (I'm sitting now, typing this text, just in gazebo). If you are good with money - make a swimming pool (you can have heated water), cover it for a cold time, extend the terrace. Make an attic and a platform for walks on the roof of the house. All that you have enough imagination and money. Not to mention the possibility of making shashlik in the courtyard, sitting by the fireplace in winter, getting together with friends in the yard ...
How can this be compared to an apartment?
I think in the next 20 years there should be a strong tendency (in particular, due to remote work) to the restructuring of cities, the emergence of large residential areas close to nature and recreation. (For example, Moscow is being expanded more than twice now, and the task of reducing the population density is set.)
Do you work remotely? Nothing holds you in a cramped city.
Here, perhaps, all the main points. Good luck to you and me.
Do not be a specialist. Learn to act
The main resource for a developing person is not knowledge and experience. And not even money or connections.
')
The environment of knowledge is now changing too quickly and speaking with confidence that even after five years, the profession of a programmer (for example) will be equally in demand - it is impossible. And there is no doubt that in 10 years all the existing knowledge of the same programmer will become useless without constant updating in the process.
The accumulation of knowledge and experience is a linear process, and therefore not the most effective. A specialist always has a clear salary ceiling, which is practically impossible to overcome (even continuous linear growth will not work here).
A bet should be made not on a specific specialization, but on the ability to make decisions in a changing environment, using our own and other people's knowledge, money and other resources precisely as temporary resources for a specific task.
Professionals with knowledge can always be hired.
But each specialist can only make his own piece of the project. In fact, he cannot do anything whole and does not see the big picture. So, it always embodies the ideas of others.
Develop, choose and act cannot be learned at the institute or by books. Books are useful for reading, but more useful is active practice.
Be yourself. Be different
People are different. You should not rely on other people's ideas and drive yourself into a frozen form of how you think, or even worse, according to others, you need to work and what to do. In fact, you shouldn’t focus on anyone or anything. Explore yourself and develop your way in life, rather than trying to match something.
You will not become strong in what you do not like and what is not yours. One who imitates always catches up with others.
Go your way to what is close to you.
Be different, and you can what others are not able to. And this is appreciated.
As a result, you will choose a niche (not a specialization, but an area of ​​development), which is more pleasant for you, closer. In which you are like a fish in water.
Relatively speaking, if you are inclined to rest - work on projects related to rest. Love to communicate - negotiate. And if you like to draw - create a design studio. Do what you are interested in doing.
Create a team
A freelancer is a man-company. If you take orders remotely, half of the work has already been done.
Next you need to take one or more partners, choose the person responsible for the projects and take the projects as a whole. The most interesting thing, of course, is to tighten up the skills of negotiation and learn to look for orders by yourself, forming a team around you.
Do not rent an office.
Of course, neither this nor the other ideas described in the text are rules. On the contrary, it is solely about the fact that you should not limit yourself to excess. The office is superfluous, but this is not the rule.
The most important thing to look for orders is to have something to offer. That is, a team capable of implementing projects qualitatively in a good niche.
Work less and manage more
If you have created a team, do not postpone hiring an assistant who will do what was your specialty for you. If you are a higher level, your level will raise the work of an assistant. Strive to gradually withdraw from the production chain and control its quality at all stages, and not to do the work personally.
This will then allow you to hire more specialists and work in parallel on a large number of projects. One way or another, increase the flow.
Be engaged in strategic goals to expand the case, rather than solving minor issues. It will be impossible if you are a leading specialist.
Your business will grow at a rate of about twice a year. This means that if today you need to solve one thing, in 4 years you will need to solve 16 cases. Therefore, free up your personal time to be able to solve them. Your level as a manager will be determined mainly by your strategic abilities and the ability to resolve any issues that arise as quickly as possible.
To decide does not mean to do. To solve means to set tasks for others and quickly find answers to any questions.
Grow your brand
Even one freelancer is a brand. Moreover, the team.
Of course, there are far fewer known teams than unknown ones. And speaking of the brand, I do not mean the need for mass advertising and worldwide fame.
But you, in your eyes and in the eyes of customers, other people, should become a brand, a team that has a clear goal and a niche in which the work is carried out.
To begin with, you need to understand your features - what your team can do best and communicate these features to others. Shape them.
Work in the expensive segment
The simple rule: do not do shit and do not work with idiots.
This applies to both customers and partners, professionals. If you see that work does not go with someone, that a person is inadequate, do not waste your time working with him. If the customer does not understand the scope of the order even after the explanations, if the further work has lost its meaning, change the customer, learn how to work with more understanding people.
If there is a person in your team, whose personal interests, ambitions and hysteria for which it overlaps the team’s goals, do not work with it.
Do not make low-quality products. Go to the highest level in your segment. Strive to work with the most serious customers.
Set a goal to live in your home in a resort area.
An unexpected point for the topic of the article. But still - choose where to live.
If you work at a computer - you are ready to work remotely. So, you can choose for yourself where you live.
I happened to live in several cities of different sizes. The last couple of years I live in private houses in the suburbs.
Megapolises are not designed for a comfortable and pleasant life and, in principle, are created not for people, but for consumption and production. From my point of view, only a person who has nothing to compare with can choose life in an apartment in Moscow. Rhythm, lifestyle, direction of thoughts in such places was created in order to use a person for the city.
“The city is an evil force; he is dragging on. ” It is foolish to work an average of 8 hours a day at a frantic pace, without having time for a tasty, measured lunch, to go anywhere for two hours, and to spend a decent part of the miserable gap on rest for purchases.
Tired sad people in the evening metro with people deprived of facial expressions or in a mask of alienation. A society that measures success through the ability to buy and not live comfortably and happily in their own pleasure is doomed to idiocy.
More humane resort cities, suburbs and private homes. They are made more for people than for optimizing distances and the ability to squeeze more out of us.
It's not about how much you are able to spend or earn a month. The point is whether you like your life, your lifestyle.
If you don’t like your life, that you spend a lot of money, you work a lot just to live in the megalopolis - it’s pointless.
Meanwhile, a house outside the city is comparable to an apartment of a similar area.
If you have got a house - you can always attach anything to it, hang a punching bag in the yard, put a tennis table, create a garden, make a gazebo in which you can work most of the year (I'm sitting now, typing this text, just in gazebo). If you are good with money - make a swimming pool (you can have heated water), cover it for a cold time, extend the terrace. Make an attic and a platform for walks on the roof of the house. All that you have enough imagination and money. Not to mention the possibility of making shashlik in the courtyard, sitting by the fireplace in winter, getting together with friends in the yard ...
How can this be compared to an apartment?
I think in the next 20 years there should be a strong tendency (in particular, due to remote work) to the restructuring of cities, the emergence of large residential areas close to nature and recreation. (For example, Moscow is being expanded more than twice now, and the task of reducing the population density is set.)
Do you work remotely? Nothing holds you in a cramped city.
Here, perhaps, all the main points. Good luck to you and me.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/127404/
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