Next month October 2019 I’m reaching the mark of 3 years living entirely on freelance development. So far so good, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made and since then, life is being a real journey.
Here are some topics that I think went right in these 3 years.
Start with a development framework
My journey on software development started with a cliche that is often found in the software development world. A guy that is frustrated by always having to look after a developer when a good idea appears.
The food truck scene in Sao Paulo was booming in 2017, so I decided to make something addressing this market as a side project. I choose Meteorjs and them 8 months later, Lemeat was born. The business idea didn’t went well but the building process paved my way into the freelance world. I was not confident as a developer but I knew that I could deliver some full-stack projects using Meteorjs.
I could land my first project as a software developer because I was proficient at a specific thing and since them I’ve landed several other projects using Meteorjs.
This is not what I would advice nowadays, but it really worked for at that time.
Long term relationships
In the first year, I kept working for the same contractor for almost 14 months and we build a strong friendship. That kind of relationship made me look for clients that I could build the same relationship that I build with my first client What kept me sane (thinking o how to keep paying my bills) is that I always had a main contractor that kept me busy most of the time. So I think that focusing on long term relationships was a great big deal.
Honesty and fair play
I got in contact with a client that wanted to develop an admin panel for his application and he was really into building something from scratch. Since the admin panel was really simple I shared with him an admin panel that I’ve made on a previous project without charging a penny. Later he contacted me asking if I could do some more work for him and he turned out to be one of the best clients that I’ve ever had.
I think honesty plays a very important role when dealing with remote clients. I never asked any client money in advance (like the 50% of the project before starting the job) and I’ve never get scammed.
Crossfit, Ceramics and house cleaning/dishwashing
From day one I knew that physical exercise was very important to keep me healthy and my mind sane. Working from home can make you fill a lil bit isolated from people, so going to Crossfit almost every weekday to meet people and friends was very important to my day to day routine.
I usually work in sprints of 1 hour and 20 minutes of rest, so in those intervals, I do some house cleaning and dishwashing. This is a funny way to decompress your brain after some deep concentration.
This year I’ve added a new hobby that is making ceramics on the pottery wheel, sometimes that I don’t feel like coding, I sit and throw some pottery and that is fun.
What went wrong? Well, it’s difficult to tell, since my experience with freelancing has been very smooth so far.
Here are 2 things that didn’t go well…
Loneliness
Working from home can make you feel sometimes all alone, even if you live with your wife and she is working from home as well. So there are some periods that I was very uncomfortable with this feeling. When I went remote 3 years ago, I had these grand ideas of putting in work from cafes and many places. The reality of it today is that I barely leave my house.
Side project and working on my own ideas
Well, yeah, it’s been 3 years freelancing nonstop and I didn’t have the focus to start and finish the ever dreamed side project that would grant me a recurring income. From the beginning, the main idea of learning software development was to build my own business. So, this blog is a way to start documenting the process of building a business from scratch and keep me accountable.
Freelancing had been a good journey so far!