Organized freelance. Part 1

In this article, I would like to share my own experience of creating a company that is not burdened with location. Personally, we call this organized freelancing.



What is the essence:

First, all the performers in our team are freelancers. They are quite independent, they are constantly developing professionally, they do not need to be forced to work, they are already motivated and lead a lifestyle that they like.



Secondly, we do not have and never will have an office as such, which gives freedom to all team members, plus reduces significant costs for the client, what is our advantage over large, cumbersome studios and agencies.

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Thirdly, all the work is done by the piece, there are bonuses, bonuses, but not salaries, which forces team members to be interested in high results, in large volumes of work.



All these factors solve a lot of problems in the market, both from the client and from the contractor.



Advantages for the client: no overpayment for the office and a large staff. Solves the problem with "scam" from the usual freelancers, who are still not necessary to select.



Pluses for freelancers: there is no need to constantly look for orders for themselves, which allows you to focus on work. There are partners who can take on all the other functions to create a product. The project manager, as a rule, is a link and smoothes all angles when working with a client, which is one of the main advantages, all work takes place with a person from his team, this eliminates the need to adapt to each client and find a common language with him.



Also, given the high speed of technology development, a team of this kind will adapt to change much faster than a cumbersome studio with a staff and a fixed pay.

Head

If you decide to create a company like ours, then this chapter deals with you.

Organized freelancing should be managed by someone. And do not be afraid that after you organize a team they will forget about you. You always have enough work.

Objectives of the task

At the initial stage, you will have plenty of tasks, then you can choose what exactly you want to do in your own team.



First, it is the organization of the whole process of the studio: providing tools, searching for performers, monitoring the process of working on orders and much more. Secondly, it is the search for customers and work with them. Those. conditionally we divide two basic functions: sales and work on the product.

Resolution

To perform these functions, you will need a certain amount of knowledge. As a rule, people have knowledge either in sales and get a terrible product, constant conflicts with their team, or lack of minimal knowledge of sales and business, this is often found among ordinary freelancers who decide to open their studio. What is all this necessary for?



Regardless of the degree of professionalism of employees, the manager must understand the product and be able to speak with them in the same language, delve into the essence of what is happening. The manager should focus on the general issues of the product, and the staff - on the particulars. The task of the manager is to optimize time and labor costs, solving many issues with the client at the negotiation stage, simply understanding what he needs and how to achieve it.



You need to understand the product in order to prevent discord in the team and delaying the deadlines. Therefore, deciding to create your own company, you need a certain amount of professional knowledge about each stage of development. I saw enough real life examples when the so-called entrepreneurs simply found a freelancer who makes a clumsy product, completely himself, wrote the price list and went to look for clients. Further, having promised a mountain of everything, completely not understanding how the process is going on, they delayed the terms from a week to 3-4 months, while remaining in debt, because The freelancer did not want to be hired into slavery and had to look for new performers for the same budget.



If you are going into a new area for yourself - gain knowledge and make several projects at cost, to understand how everything works, do not undertake to conquer large projects, not understanding the development process and not having good performers.



For example, if you are going to create landing pages, then the minimum knowledge package will be something like this: landing principles, sales funnel, how texts are written and built for Landings, what is layout (html, css), what are scripts, cms systems, contextual advertising , smm, seo, web design specifics, photoshop basics, domains, hosting.



You should not be a guru in all these matters, but should have a folded picture of how all these things are interconnected, how the creation process will take place. For the same example, the minimum set of actions will be as follows: drawing up a technical specification, creating a structure and writing texts, drawing a layout in Photoshop, sending to layout, connecting scripts, buying a domain, hosting, loading the site.



Of course, all this does not pretend to be called the truth and you can understand along the way, having already begun to work, it is likely that this will be more effective, but then be prepared for problems with the team.



In addition to knowledge of the product, you need knowledge of business processes, so as not to fall into the dirt face in front of the customer. It is necessary to understand why a customer needs a product, what problems it should solve. You need to know how the sales funnel works, what ROI, conversion and other things are. What the truth sometimes does not know the client himself.



Perhaps these are scary words for you now, but in order to more or less penetrate into all these things, you will need a week, which will greatly facilitate your future work.

Bridge between introverts and extroverts

Despite the fact that I have written quite a lot of different things that you have to do, the main task for you is to combine extrovert entrepreneurs and introverted freelancers. Frequently, freelancers, if they are not students with no experience, have very cool development skills, but cannot get along with the team, cannot adjust to the employer and sit in the office. And the fact that all freelancers are lazy people who decide to earn money on beer is nonsense.

Personally, I distinguish two modes of operation: the mode of the creator and the mode of the manager, which will help us to understand what is what.



Imagine an ordinary day of a manager, he is filled with a bunch of small things, meetings, calls, letters, payments, and other things. He looks like a sprinter, who over time makes small runs for short distances. Active change of activity, accurate schedule, diary.



In contrast, this is measured thoughtful work, say a programmer or designer. To distract them for half an hour of the meeting is to kill 3 hours of work. They find it hard to get out of the creative process and even more so to work with clients.



Therefore, a person is needed who will understand the specifics of the work of both parties. Such a person will be you. In the initial stages, this will be your drama, you will have to delve into projects with your head and work in parallel with clients and calls. But now you need to survive, and then choose the side on which you will be more comfortable, giving the work on projects to the project manager or sales and sales customers and account managers, and maybe both. We will talk about this in more detail later.



Now the main thing to learn that you must provide a bridge between businessmen and creators.



PS: Today, if everything is interesting, then in the next article I will talk about working with performers.