ReDefining Success: Forging Your Own Path In A World Of Advice

Antonia Landi lost her job in December 2022, days before the end of her probation, at her eighth employer in six and a half years in Berlin. She decided to freelance as a product operations consultant. By her account, the advice she then collected did not fit her, so she dropped five common rules. At Freelance Unlocked 2024 she explains why.

What the talk covers

• Niche down. She works without a defined ideal client. Her focus is a mission: helping people build better product organisations, in whatever form that takes, from coaching and training to community building.
• Do not work for free. She says her reputation rests on free articles, talks and coffee chats. In her words, luck grows with the action you take on your passion times the number of people you tell about it.
• Only do what scales. She writes new talks for every conference and was told that would not scale. Her reply: why plan to scale before you know something works? Early freelance years, in her view, are for learning your message and your price.
• Have a content strategy. She posts when she has something to say, keeps no schedule and has never used a chatbot for a post. Authentic content performs best, in her experience.
• Build a sales funnel. Her field needs explaining first, so she aims for the moment a person understands what product operations is, through writing, speaking and debate.

Her takeaway: filter advice through your own values, because only you know what will work for you.

From the Q&A

Product operations differs from agile coaching, she says, by looking at how work gets done overall and sitting centrally, not inside one to three teams. She set four objectives for 2023, missed all of them and now works from values and mission.

Who it's for

New and prospective freelancers who feel buried in advice.