In the present day I am excited to introduce you to Karen Mattiazzo – my newest visitor on the Company Escapology podcast. A floor and sample designer based mostly in Manchester. She made the large leap from Brazil to the UK simply earlier than Brexit and he or she’s a freelancer.
Freelancing is without doubt one of the routes many individuals take after they depart a job or a profession. Simply that phrase ‘free’ would possibly inform you why it holds attraction. It implies selection and management – strolling away with out strings.
Karen has labored as each worker and freelancer over time in quite a lot of design roles earlier than coming to sample and print design. And with these expertise she’s been capable of create quite a lot of income streams via freelancing: she affords commissions, she sells merchandise on-line, she sells her time delivering initiatives, she licenses her designs and now she is exploring promoting merchandise via retail channels.
Is it as a result of she’s a designer that she has all these choices?
Possibly. However I do not suppose so.
She’s positively extra entrepreneurial than many company folks, however I imagine that is largely a query of mindset. Open to us all.
Karen has a field of skills that she will be able to deploy to ship a variety of issues. She geese and weaves round totally different buyer varieties, altering buyer preferences, new applied sciences, tendencies…to make cash. And he or she loves it!
I feel it is a captivating mannequin for us – largely non-designers – to discover.
What particular expertise do we have now? What distinctive expertise can we draw on? What do we all know that others do not?
And may we package deal these skills in a manner that allows us to create merchandise providers and experiences that different folks will worth?
Can your expertise and experience be packaged up right into a product, just like the HR Hub that Katie Elliott affords alongside her HR freelancing?
Is your lived expertise one thing you can share to assist others? Like Claire Perry-Louise’s expertise constructing her personal group, Like Hearted Leaders, that she now shares with others?
Have you learnt one thing you can flip right into a ‘how one can information’ like Kia Cannons did when she offered an e-book to assist artists promoting on Instagram and made £15,000 in just a few weeks?
And while I’m removed from making a residing from Company Escapology, take a look at the merchandise from which I’ve been capable of generate earnings: E-book, On-line Course, 121 teaching, Group Teaching, Paid Speeches, Paid Workshops…
One thing that simply began out as this weblog!
We will so simply bounce to the plain when eager about what we do subsequent – an analogous job, consulting, teaching…however what merchandise may you create out of your expertise, experiences and information?
It’s why I spend lots of time in my group teaching, Escapology Dwell, serving to folks dig deep to record out all of the issues they’ve finished – not only recently and never simply in work.
Typically the reply lies in one thing that mixes two or extra totally different capabilities – and collectively that might result in one thing that hits the candy spot of fixing a buyer ache, one thing distinctive to you and one thing that offers you power and pleasure.
See if the following tips aid you provide you with your individual product portfolio:
1. Return: What jobs have you ever finished the place folks needed to satisfy you, hear and study from you. These are sometimes good locations to uncover issues that had been completely apparent for you, however to not others.
2. Watch your pace: What do you do quicker than most individuals? So quick it appears to be like easy. However it’s not. You’ve simply obtained good at it – and it’s in all probability a pure power. How may you assist others go quicker?
3. Repeat your self: what may you do as soon as however promote a number of occasions? Like Karen licensing her materials designs or me promoting my on-line course?
4. DIY or DIFM: How may you set another person up so they may do one thing useful themselves for a fraction of the worth they pay right this moment? How may you do it for them for a premium?
5. Comply with Karen’s recommendation: Analysis the platforms – Fiver, Malt, Upwork, Freelance, Individuals Per Hour… See what others are doing to package deal up their expertise into merchandise which can be simpler for folks to purchase.
In right this moment’s world you’ll be able to spin up a product in an excellent quick time and check it simply as quickly. And you are able to do all this earlier than you even depart your job or alongside one thing else in the event you’ve already left.
Give it a whirl. And let me now the way you get on!
I’m so grateful to finish January with three full cohorts for Escapology Dwell – what an honour to be trusted by 24 folks navigating life after company. I feel I’ll have a break now, however message me if you wish to be added to the waitlist. Or I can assist 121 – I’ve a few packages to assist preserve prices low.
