The Freelancer’s Evolution: Steps You Go Through On The Freedom’s Path

May 15, 2024 10:00

Irina Rokosz spent 18 years in corporate jobs before freelancing. By her account, she expected to solve problems as an expert and found herself hired at the bottom again, to hammer one task all day. At Freelance Unlocked 2024 she presents her answer: the Freedom's Path, eight steps built on Robert Kiyosaki's ESBI cash flow quadrant.

**What the talk covers**

- Why freelancing can feel like employment: companies hire through a job description of tasks, and freelancers inherit that process without seeing the problem or solution behind it.
- Her core idea is what she calls leverage, impact on top of effort. The same five hours on a dull book and on an inspiring one give different results.
- Steps one to three: employee, then contractor who sets their own price, then independent professional who gets more out of the same hours with templates, task tracking and automated contracts.
- Steps four and five: decouple from time by productising a service, for example a UX designer's website review delivered as a report, then get fully booked by marketing yourself, through content that tells clients you exist, what you do and why you are good.
- Steps six to eight: hire employees and run a business, then live from your brand as a shareholder, then invest.
- You can be in two boxes at once and skip steps before freelancing, but not inside it, in her view. Freelancers who produce content without knowing their client have skipped a step, she says.

**From the Q&A**

If she started again, she would first win clients and add systems and brand later. Content is for those who need more clients, and a support community helps against loneliness. To find a niche, look at what you could talk about for an hour, enjoy for hours and are asked for by others.

**Who it's for**

Freelancers who want an order of steps for growing a business.