The Discussion With Your S.O. About Freelancing
Here are some tips to make that conversation easier.
Here’s the scenario, you want to strike out on your own, but there is a significant other in your life, and your income directly impacts that person and perhaps a few dependants.
In this post, I want to give you some suggestions on how you can make the discussion with your S.O. a little easier.
What Are Their Concerns?
You need to take a moment and put aside your selfish desires to work for yourself and let’s face it, this urge is all about you.
You need to consider your current financial position and ensure it does not get any worse than it currently is.
Long term, perhaps your income will be much better for you and everyone in your sphere of influence, but your partner’s immediate thought will do “How will we afford { INSERT SUFF HERE }”.
You have to have a plan to keep the status quo.
Have Plan
I recommend you make a plan of attack and bring that to your partner so they can see you are serious and have a way of protecting your current standard of living.
Here are the five things you should have in your plan to address all objections.
Gig On The Side
Something I recommend to all potential freelancers do is gig on the side. This allows you to dip your toe into the freelance world with very little risk.
What this will prove to your S.O. is:
You can get work, on demand.
You can create an income of $X if you extrapolate your time with your side gig earnings.
There is a demand for your skills.
If you can point to a nice little side hustle income the conversation become easier. Here’s how this can look.
“What I want to do is take on some freelance work in the evening or weekends to prove there is a steady stream of work out there for me.”
Build A Runway
Having a runway or savings set aside to cover all costs for a few months is a great idea.
Having cash on hand to cover the famine of the feast and famine cycle.
The runway analogy works like this, when you start your freelance journey you have zero altitudes (read money) as you pick up speed and start getting gigs, you eventually get to take off, your runway money covers the zero altitude when you have no or not enough money to cover your monthly expenses.
When you take off, this is when you have found a group of clients that want to use your services regularly and your income has returned to your previous level, and to extend the aeroplane metaphor, you are gaining height.
Save some money to cover your costs for a certain period of time from your side gig, I recommend three months.
Here’s how that part of the conversation will go.
“What I will do is save the money from my side gig, and when I have three months runway saved, and not before, I’ll hand in my notice at my full-time job, does that sound reasonable?”
Show How You Can Cover Your Current Costs
You need some solid numbers to prove you can cover your costs and get the green light to go full-time freelancing.
If you can get X per hour as a freelancer and you you can extrapoloate that to a full time income this can really help
Here are your prompts:
“If I can get $150 per hour as a freelancer and I can easily get 20 hours per week that is $3000 per week.”
The numbers are probably a bit high for a noob but you get the idea.
Cut Costs
Here’s a very short-term suggestion, when you first start freelancing cut some of your costs.
I’ll go a little further and cut your costs and not the costs that will make a life change for your S.O. or kids.
Perhaps you can drop a hobby or downgrade your personal stuff; car, subscription to stuff, run instead of going to the gym, you get the idea cut costs that affect you not your peeps.
Remember this is in the short term to make your S.O. feel more comfortable with your jump into freelancing.
There is no point in freelancing if your standard of living goes down and stays down you might as well stay at a job if your trade won’t bring in decent money.
Show How Much This Means To You
Lastly, you can make a pitch on how much this means to you and how much more content you will be working for yourself.
Don’t overdo it but make it clear to your S.O. how important this is for you.
“This is really important to me and I need your support, what do you think?”
Honey, Can We Talk About Something, I’ve Got Something On My Mind?
So my S.O. can we have a chat about me going freelance …
Have the talk, get buy-in from your partner, get that plan together and only pull the trigger when your plan has come to fruition.
But what if they still say no?