There are far more perks to being a small business owner than downsides, in my opinion. I can take a day and sluff off if I don’t feel well or need to run errands. Doctor’s appointments were always making me have to make up my hours when I was an employee, but forget that life now.
For me, the two worst parts (and really the only bad parts about my line of work) of a job are:
- Getting to the estimate part of the deal and waiting for either a) death by shock, b) complete rejection and instant counter-offer (sheeah, that works), or c) an elated new client
- Finishing the work and shooting out the invoice with a nice “thank you” in the “notes” field and see what comes of it
Thus far my experience has been overwhelmingly positive with only one non-payer who will get their site unlocked once they pay, one who seems to continually misunderstand the scope of the project and wants $3000 worth of work for $800, and one who offered me baby clothes as an exchange for my skills. I’m still in the early stages of figuring out my billing and deposit system, since I don’t think many of my clients quite feel comfortable with a full-prepay for jobs under $3000 yet, but I do insist on my first hour of consulting and site work for new clients ahead of time and have great results with that by billing exact time after that first hour.
Here is a video that will really make you empathize with freelancers everywhere:
