Until January 2020, I was an office worker. After hundreds of wanderings, I came to this idea.
I will never go back to work again. I won't let anyone else ruin my life.
The path I've taken since then is documented in over 100 blog posts, four books, and over 200 YouTube videos.
Among them, there is an entrepreneurial path in particular. It's strange to look back. So it's fair to share.
money.
To make a living, I started freelancing out of nowhere. Of course, it wasn't anything, and I dedicated myself to finding a way to find my way while earning money. I never thought of myself as a freelancer back then. But in hindsight, I was a freelancer.
You can check out some of my freelance work here.
It was very natural to try to transition from freelance to corporate.
why did you try entrepreneurship? If anyone asks, I will answer like this.
First, freelancing felt like a vehicle for money. I wanted to find more meaning. It's like expanding my life beyond what I was born with. I wanted to make a bigger impact. The way was corporate.
Second, freelancers were sole proprietors. Individual entrepreneurs are inherently temporary. When the representative dies, the business also ceases to exist. Goodwill can be sold, but the business is gone. I wanted to make something lasting. An organization that serves others and gives them dreams even if I die. It was a corporate form.
Third, I wanted to call and help people who were similar to me in the corporate world. It's like an incubator where people like me, who are trying to transition from office workers to a second life, don't lose their dreams while maintaining a livelihood in the early days. (And now I'm working with such colleagues. We talk about each other's dreams. Those dreams aren't at work. But nobody's sorry about that.)
In terms of time, it took me a year to write unemployed and become a writer. Then I worked as a freelancer for about a year. After that, the corporation was established as a joint-stock company. Because all of this happened in two and a half years, sometimes even I am amazed at myself.
Transitioning from freelance to entrepreneurial is easier said than done. Because it's not just a form.
Looking back, my small success is thanks to these three things. (The mindset was not mentioned.)
1. Sales
As my freelance sales increased, it exceeded the level I could afford. Ten million won a month is popular these days, and freelancers have to work like crazy when they earn that much. That's why I'm looking for someone to join, and that's a very small gap in corporateization. How could I increase sales? Oh, this is the story of a book. I've talked about it several times on YouTube.
In any case, sales continued to grow. I am confident that I can continue. I believed I had found my own market. Those indicators were profitability and sales.
2. Laugh at the market
I laughed at the rules already set in the market. It scoffed at the existing players in the market.
You cannot beat the competition by following the rules that have already been established in the market. Because I'm new And the more I follow the rules, the more cards I can use are narrowed down to price cuts. If you charge a low price and bring in work, even if you work hard, there is no profit. It is like an office worker having a hard time buying an apartment even if he has worked all his life.
I made my own by ignoring the rules of the market.
Cheaper, faster, easier!
You only need to produce results that satisfy the consumer!
First, cheaper. How to match my price to the market price but make a profit? Costs need to be lowered. For example, I worked as a freelancer writing and distributing press releases. (I'm not in that field and I don't have any network!) The price is around 100,000 won. However, the distribution outsourcing agency fee is 70,000 to 80,000 won. I have 2-3 thousand won left. After doing this a few times, I thought, “I can do the distribution myself.” I called the press. Quite by chance, I came to know that there are wholesalers for press release distribution as well. The distribution cost was 20,000 won. By simply doing this, my profit per case went from 20,000-30,000 won to 70,000-80,000 won.
Second, faster and easier. You should be able to do in an hour what other people take five hours to do. For freelancers, time is money. For example, I used to freelance for a publishing agency. (This is also not the field I worked in, and I didn't have any network!) At first, I only acted as an agent for putting it on the market, but later I also acted as an agent for production. It is to turn a manuscript into a book. InDesign is a tool for creating paper books. So I learned InDesign. (I didn't know how to do InDesign, I learned InDesign to do it after receiving the job). But it didn't work out. So I did it in word. It was possible because it was made to the extent that it was difficult to distinguish whether it was printed with InDesign or Word when actually printed on paper. In the marketplace, InDesign editors earn 15,000 won per page. I could do it for half the price and in 1/3 the time.
In other words, rather than insisting on 'authentic' that no one knows in the market, it secured competitiveness by ignoring and ridiculing market rules.
I recommend this book for markets and strategies. The secret recipe for my younger days
3. Bundle into your own package
In the freelance market, the price has already been set. If you don't have a reputation in the industry, freelancers have no choice but to be stuck in the market.
Most freelancers struggle here.
You have to make a product that doesn't exist in the world. To do so, there is no need to open a mold and lock yourself in a small room to do research. Just make a new combination.
Let me give you an example. I created my own service by combining the two freelancers mentioned above. While acting as a publishing agent, I even did the production myself. It was also done in a very cheap and simple way. Satisfying the client was fundamental. However, it is also difficult to deviate from the price guide of the existing market. So I combined journalism, which was another freelance job. It was because I knew that the thing I regret the most after self-publishing was marketing. A service that turns a manuscript into a book, registers it in a bookstore, and writes an article about the content and sends it to the news. Such services are very rare.
what is rare?
That means I can set my own price.
Smartphone price points are fixed now, but the first smartphone that created that price was the iPhone 3GS. If you create a combination that did not exist in the market, you will be free from price. There is no competitor to compare with.
This is where revenue comes from. It is a strategy that allows you to set a higher price than your existing competitors, and from there comes a rate of return that your competitors can't even dream of.
There is an absolute clue to this. Don't try to outsource these things. I should be able to do this myself. Outsourcing creates a price bubble. See Mart and Direct Deal. The more people put their hands on it, the higher the price. If the price goes up, you can't continue in the competition, and it's a losing game because you can't make a profit. If you have to outsource, it is better to do it very cheaply or to train staff.
Here's a quick conclusion:
To go from being a freelancer to being an entrepreneur, you have to let go of this idea.
I just do my own thing and leave the rest to the experts.
Freelancers only know their field, but entrepreneurs must know all aspects of business. Only then can they create this kind of combination, create their own market, and gain overwhelming price competitiveness and profit from it. A business isn't a business if it doesn't make a profit.
The things I learned to do that were InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and homepage creation tools – I even made a business website with actual annual sales of 400 million myself. , how to write a press release, how to distribute a press release, how to issue a tax invoice, how to establish a corporation, how to advertise on Google, how to advertise on Facebook, how to design an ad banner, how to design a book cover,… . All of this was learned through trial and error. If you knew how to do these things while working, you are not at all.
No, would it be so difficult to become an entrepreneur?
There is a weak point here. I didn't know this path ahead of time and went through it. With tenacity to find my own path, I walked one by one as if breaking a seal. Looking back, I was like, “Oh, so it was.” Therefore, there is no need to be afraid.
At this moment, it is more important to be faithful to today. Don't waste your time needlessly, don't be swayed by unimportant things, find your own way, without hope or despair.
2022. September. at some dawn
