This Is How Freelancers Keep Their Books

Kaitlyn: I spoke to the accountant. He's like, “this is your tax bill.” And I'm like,”Hmm okay. What do I do?”

Ed: Yeah. In the freelance industry, you're pretty much an independent contractor. You are.

Gabrielle: You have to create a workflow. You have to have standards of operation. You have to have standard procedures.

Rob: I think as a freelancer, you should always invest in yourself and educating yourself to streamline your process and your systems for your clients' experience has drastically changed the budgets I get from clients.

‍Gabrielle: Every single day, you are challenging yourself to show up in a way and stretch beyond anything that you had ever known before. Because you are wearing so many different hats and learning so much about sectors in your business that there are whole industries dedicated to.

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This is How to Manage Your Clients

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Kaitlyn: When I onboard new clients, the first 10 or so minutes is me just getting to understand them, what their goals are, who they really are, what they really, really want.

Rob: I can streamline who my client is, what they want, what they need, and their budget within a couple minutes of writing through my intake form.

Gabrielle: I meet with all my clients on Fridays. And so just give them the structure again with those SOPs and workflows that you are going to establish. You can set those standards in place from the beginning.

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This is How to Handle Taxes Like a Boss

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Kaitlyn: I'm Australian. I didn't have my visa in England, so I was still working my business in Australia, but I was paying 45% tax when I thought I was paying 17%, which was in the UK. Now I know what I can do. Now I know it's only 17% tax. I'm going I've set up my whole spreadsheet so it's worked out what the tax is gonna be, what the overhead says. So now I know what I actually need to bring in every month to stabilize and continue to grow the business.

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This is How to Get Paid on Time

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Ed: You know, as a freelancer, you might get nervous about, “oh my God, how am I gonna get paid?”

Kaitlyn: Upwork makes it really easy. You start a contract, and then the client pays. And then, you get paid off the Upwork and it's all protected.

Ed: They put up an escrow amount of money into an account, the client that's hiring you. Once you agree to the contract terms, you click on reply, you agree to the contract terms, and bam, an email comes instantly.

Farah: I bill hourly using the Upwork tracker. And for fixed price jobs, I make sure, rather, that the clients would send me milestones in advance and fund the milestone and activate the milestone before I start working.

Ed: And I've never gotten burned, which is great. That is really, really an awesome part of using the platform.